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Blue Jackets News and Notes: Nutivaara, Yevenko, Scott

May 5, 2016, 12:12 PM ET [1 Comments]
Paul Berthelot
Columbus Blue Jackets Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Blue Jackets made a few smaller moves this week, notably signing 2015 7th round pick, defencemen Markus Nutivaara to an entry-level contract.




Nutivaara spent this past season playing for in Finland for Karpat in the Liiga. He had an impressive season compiling six goals and 16 assists in 50 games. He was also strong in the playoffs with five points in seven games. The Liiga does track fancy stats and when looking at Nutivaara he grades out very very well.




Personally I had very low expectations for Nutivaara as he’s a 1994 born player who was drafted in his fourth draft eligible season. He really hadn’t shown much outside of a strong playoffs last year. Seeing how this season played out he has defiantly altered my expectations, hopefully we get a chance to see him suit up for Lake Erie in the near future.

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Monsters defencemen Oleg Yevenko has been loaned to Belarus for the IIHF World Championships.




Yevenko was signed by the Blue Jackets last season and in 54 games with Lake Erie he had one goal and three asssits, while leading the team in penalty minutes with 154. This is another player signing I didn’t understand Yevenko is big but that’s all he has in his tool kit.

It doesn’t bode well for his future with the team that he's leaving during the middle of the playoffs. He was loaned to Belarus because he wasn’t playing for the Monsters. Most of the current Monsters will be back again next year, which will make it tough for Yevenko to get into the lineup. He’s likely in the ECHL next season or not with the organization.

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Monsters Begin Round Two Tonight.

Lake Erie kicks off the second round of the playoffs tonight. They will be taking on Grand Rapids, Detroit’s affiliate. Grand Rapids has some good players, particularly Anthony Mantha who the Monsters will need to keep in check this series. The Monsters need the scoring of Josh Anderson and Oliver Bjorkstand to keep up if they are going to win this series. Those two were great in round one.

The Monsters added some forward depth today adding Justin Scott. I wrote about Scott wrote about Scott when he was signed. He won’t be an impact player but provides some bottom six depth should a player go down with injury.

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