Cody Goloubef is the latest Blue Jacket to suffer the injury big this pre-season. He joins David Clarkson, Keegan Kolesar and Dillon Heatherington, who will all be missing the start of the season with injuries.
This is a tough time for Goloubef to get injured as he was in a battle for one of the seven defencemen spots in the NHL. With him injured it opens up an opportunity for Markus Nutivaara, who’s been impressing this pre-season.
Nutivaara is very solid puck moving defencemen. He can skate and isn’t afraid to carry the puck. He is a skilled defencemen, which is something the Blue Jackets have lacked in recent seasons. The team will enter the season with three puck movers in Seth Jones, Ryan Murray and Zach Werenski, but it wouldn’t hurt to have one more. The Jackets are going to have at least three and maybe four skilled forward lines this year, it would be ideal to also have three skilled, puck moving defensive pairs. Nutivaara would fit nicely on the third pair alongside David Savard. His skill set is a real upgrade on Dalton Prout. Prout would be a fine seventh defencemen who could rotate in and out of the lineup when physicality is needed.
Nutivaara is older than your typical prospect, already 22 years old. He was passed over in his original draft year of 2012 and wasn’t selected until his age 20 season in 2015. At the time of the selection I thought this was a throwaway seventh round pick. Nutivaara was coming off his first season in the Finnish Pro League, the SM-Liiga, and had just two points in 35 games. The Jackets were really impressed with his playoff performance that season where he had six points in 16 games. This looked like your typical case of over reacting to a small sample.
To his credit Nutivaara was able to build upon his strong playoff-run and had a very successful 2015-16 season. He scored six goals and 16 assists, finishing tied for second among defencemen on his team with 22 points. He then added another five points in seven playoff games.
On top of the offensive production he was also quite a good defender. Per the
SM-Liiga league site Nutivaara had a 56.1% Corsi at 5 on 5. That was good enough for sixth in the league for defenders who played in at least 20 games. He’s carried that strong possession game to the pre-season and personally think it’s worth a shot to see if that can continue into the NHL season.
Jarmo Kekalainen and his scouting staff did well to find a player of this calibre so late in the draft. Even if Nutuvaara doesn’t work out, to have a seventh round pick on the cusp of the NHL should be considered a successful pick. This was supposed to be one of Jarmo’s strengths as a general manager, finding hidden gems, particularly out of Finland. He hasn’t had much success yet but it’s looking more and more like Nutivaara could be the first.
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