Blue Jackets’ Kekalainen says Bjorkstrand trade ‘had to be done’

Going into the offseason, the Blue Jackets weren’t plotting trades to create respiratory room beneath the NHL’s $82.5 million wage cap. 

Jarmo Kekalainen, the group’s basic supervisor, had loads of house to re-sign a prolonged record of restricted free brokers topped by star winger Patrik Laine, who on Friday agreed to a four-year extension price $8.7 million per 12 months. Laine’s deal pushed Columbus over the cap by about $4.5 to $5 million, however solely due to a seven-year, $68.25 million deal signed by famous person Johnny Gaudreau on July 13, a surprising determination that even caught the Blue Jackets without warning. 

“We had not deliberate or counted on getting Johnny Gaudreau, in order that modified every thing,” Kekalainen mentioned Saturday, a day after signing Laine and buying and selling Oliver Bjorkstrand for cap functions. “If we’d been capable of rely on it and plan it, we might have been in a greater place to make a few of these (cap) strikes forward of time, in order that we didn’t get squeezed. However as soon as a chance like that got here up in entrance of us and we knew it was actual … you simply can’t go on a participant like that.”