Yesterday the Blue Jackets sent qualifying offers to four of their restricted free agents.
Jones was obvious, as was Harrington. Tynan was a big part of Lake Erie so that one makes sense as well. The curious one was Alex Broadhurst. He's still relatively young at 23 but at this point doesn’t look like much of a prospect. He put up 36 points in 60 games in the regular season, which was fifth on the team. He had a solid playoffs with 12 points in 17 games. Making this move even more interesting is the players they didn’t qualify.
Chaput has been a really good AHL player finishing second on the team in scoring with 45 points in 63 games. He's also older but he’s been a player who can hold down a fourth line role in the NHL. He's played in 58 games for the Blue Jackets in his career and hasn’t looked out of place. He was a good depth player to have, who was a solid plug and play guy when injuries struck.
Paliotta is an even more questionable decision. He's a 6’3 right shot defencmen who just turned 23 years old. As a rookie in the AHL he scored 23 points in 68 games which was second on the team. He's on the cusp of being an NHL player, though he only played one game with the Blue Jackets this season. There was some talk on Twitter about how he was really bad in that one game, which may have been part of the reason he didn’t receive a qualifying offer. He was bad in that one game but that is the smallest of samples.
The bigger issue here might just be that the Monsters didn’t have room for either Chaput or Paliotta. Jeremy Crowe speculated on possible Lake Erie lines yesterday:
Currently Lake Erie looks pretty set. There isn’t a ton of room for Chaput as the team has to have roster spots for incoming players like Paul Bitter, Justin Scott and Jordan Maletta. This is part of the reason I wasn’t a big fan of either the
Maletta or
Scott signing. They didn’t look like prospects in the OHL and now are taking roster spots at the AHL level. Hopefully they don’t prevent the team from signing Dante Saliuto who was a much better player in the OHL and looks like a legit NHL prospect.
On the backend it’s an even bigger log jam. The team clearly has no room for Paliotta because they have signed too many veteran defensemen. Jamie Sifers is 33 years old and only had 19 points in 67 games last season. Oleg Yevenko is a giant, but that’s all he has going for him. He had four points in 54 games. You could have easily just cut both of those players which then makes room for Paliotta and possibly Eric Roy.
The Lake Erie Monsters have a loaded roster for next season. They have a few veterans but some questionable signings both in the forward and defence ranks has created a jog lam and unfortunately Michael Chaput and Michael Paliotta have fallen victim to the numbers game.
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