Anyone who watched the Blue Jackets even semi-regularly during the 2014-15 season knows the team needs help on defense.
They are stacked up front with plenty of quality prospects on the way - Sonny Milano, Kerby Rychel and Oliver Bjorkstrand to name a few - and are more than set in goal with Sergei Bobrovsky locked up long-term, but their defense...leaves a lot to be desired.
With that in mind, it was hardly surprising to see Elliotte Freidman note the Jackets were, and probably still are, looking for help on the backend.
Via 30 Thoughts: 16. Now, what will Kekalainen do? They have so many centres Artem Anisimov finished the season as a winger. Marko Dano and Alexander Wennberg are ready for full-time duty, and a couple more are getting close. He was looking for defencemen at one point. Whatever he wants to do, the Blue Jackets have excess.
Ryan Murray - who has struggled to stay healthy - aside, the team has nothing close to a top-pairing defenseman. I'll touch on Jack Johnson more as the summer goes on, but his underlying numbers suggest he's certainly playing more minutes than he should be, and the same can be said about David Savard.
So how do the Blue Jackets go about addressing this?
There are a few ways:
1) The Jackets could grab a defenseman like Zack Werenski and/or Ivan Provorov at the draft, and bank on development with one of those guys, Murray, Savard and co. moving forward.
2) They could trade for some help on the back end. The regular season just concluded so there aren't a lot of names out there yet, but one that has been mentioned is Eric Gelinas. Could he be a target?
3) Sign somebody in free agency.
It'll be interesting to see which route Kekalainen takes here, because their defense could certainly use some work, and - as Friedman mentioned - the Jackets have the assets to make something happen should they go the trade route.
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