The Columbus Blue Jackets fired common supervisor Jarmo Kekalainen on Thursday, ending his time on the job forward of one other essential commerce deadline for the struggling membership.
President of hockey operations John Davidson made the decision halfway by way of Kekalainen’s 11th full season on the job and with simply over three weeks to go earlier than the March 8 deadline. The 57-yr-outdated Kekalainen, who’s from Finland, was the third-longest tenured GM within the NHL.
“This is one of the hardest days I have had in my career as Jarmo is a friend, someone I have a great deal of respect for and someone who has done a lot of good things during his time here,” Davidson stated in a press release. “While the future of our club is bright, our performance has not been good enough, and it is time for a fresh perspective as we move forward.”
Davidson and the hockey operations workforce will assume GM duties on an interim foundation till a full-time substitute is employed. Davidson stated at a information convention in Columbus the main focus shall be totally on exterior candidates and predicted an exhaustive search.
Firing Kekalainen now comes with the Blue Jackets in final place within the Eastern Conference and on observe to overlook the playoffs for a fourth consecutive yr. They could possibly be sellers on the deadline, with middle Jack Roslovic set to be an unrestricted free agent and some others potential commerce candidates.
Davidson and assistant GMs Josh Flynn and Basil McRae shall be making these choices, not Kekalainen.
“We have a lot ahead of us,” stated Davidson, who talked about his personal absence due to again surgical procedure when requested about why this occurred now. “We’ve had an up-and-down, at times turbulent, season. I just think that going forward, now was the time to turn that page and go forward with all the decisions that we have to make that are ahead of us.”
It has additionally been a number of months because the botched hiring of coach Mike Babcock, who was pressured to resign on the eve of coaching camp for his conduct with gamers.
Ownership, after Kekalainen and Davidson named Pascal Vincent coach following the Babcock fiasco, stated in September there wouldn’t be any entrance workplace modifications at the moment. But the warmth was clearly on given the dearth of success because the franchise’s final playoff look in 2020.
Team president Mike Priest, additionally on the information convention with Davidson, defended the house owners’ involvement within the course of and the timing of this transfer.
“You could pick a number of different reasons: You don’t want to put him in a bad position for trade deadline where he can’t do his job,” Priest stated. “Those are issues that you can come to. You can debate whether it’s a good time of year or not, but when decisions are made and respect to the people, then we’re going to make that decision and we’re going to be honest about it.”
Only St. Louis’ Doug Armstrong, employed by the Blues in 2010, and Winnipeg’s Kevin Cheveldayoff in 2011, had been in a GM publish within the league longer than Kekalainen, who changed Scott Howson midseason almost 11 years in the past to the date in 2013.
Kekalainen inherited Todd Richards as coach, and Columbus reached the playoffs in his first full season in 2013-14. He fired Richards seven video games and 7 losses into 2015-16 and changed him with Stanley Cup-winning coach John Tortorella, who guided the Blue Jackets to 4 consecutive postseason appearances — the group’s longest sustained stretch of success since its inception on the flip of the century.
Tortorella and the workforce parted methods in 2021, and Kekalainen employed Brad Larsen, then fired him two lackluster seasons later. Hiring Babcock, whose outdated-faculty teaching ways had drawn sharp criticism from present and former gamers, final summer time was a serious danger for Kekalainen and Davidson however one they thought could be value it given his profitable observe report.
Instead, phrase emerged that Babcock had requested to see private photographs on gamers’ telephones. The NHLPA launched an investigation, Babcock resigned and Vincent — an assistant beneath Larsen who had additionally been into account for the gig initially — was elevated to take his place.
The outcomes beneath Vincent have been underwhelming. The Blue Jackets have gained simply 16 of their first 52 video games, star gamers corresponding to Johnny Gaudreau have been benched late in video games and extra important modifications past the firing of Kekalainen could possibly be coming when the common season is over in April.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 employees and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
