The Blue Jackets have a major offseason ahead

The Columbus Blue Jackets were one of the biggest surprises of the 2024-25 season, as no one expected them to do well, and yet they only missed the playoffs by two points. Now they head into the offseason with over $40 million in salary cap space, they have the potential to make a big splash if they want to.

Frank Seravalli talked about the Blue Jackets offseason and what to expect from them on Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: Well, [Don Waddell]’s going to have to spend some of [the Blue Jackets’ cap space] because you’ve got to get to the cap floor. So that part is a given.

I do think that it’s interesting that we’ve gotten to this point in time, nearly in June, and given what’s been talked about, rumbled, whatever you want to say, the rumblings, the tea leaves. Why don’t you have a deal done for Ivan Provorov? There’s this thought process that he’s interested in staying in Columbus, that his brother is going to Ohio State and has committed, that he wants to be part of this.

Well if that’s the case, then get a deal done. Most free agents aren’t beating down the door of the Blue Jackets, and you’ve got cap space and Provorov is a relatively young free agent. It’s probably is going to age pretty well too, the guy is a horse.

So that’s one thing that stands out. I think the really fun part about the Columbus Blue Jackets season is that they appeared to have a few guys step forward that show and have the ability to be difference makers. Kirill Marchenko, 74 points in 79 games. He was awesome. Kent Johnson took a massive step forward, 57 points in 68 games. You had a great season, north of a point per game, for Sean Monahan, who was banged up. And obviously so much that this team carried through with them, the tragedy of Johnny Gaudreau, and how difficult of a year it was. But Dmitri Voronkov, 47 points in 73 games.

These guys had great years and I think there’s some question of, can they find a way to duplicate that? And for a team that didn’t struggle to score at all, but really struggled [to defend], they were eighth in the league in goals for, and 25th in the league in goals against, can they find a way to keep the puck out of their net?

That’s another key question, but duplicate those results and take another step forward. We know that development in the NHL isn’t linear, but the good news for Columbus is that you have guys that showed up and delivered when I don’t know that we were necessarily sure quite what to make of them heading into last season.

You can watch the full episode here…