Jackets slowly taking shape

[Sylvanfan]

Well it's been a slow offseason to put it mildly. But thus far in the offseason the Jackets have managed to take what was a horrilby thin lineup and rework it back to having enough players to field an CPHL team. After making many gambles for an illfated playoff push that did not pay off the Jackets were sort of stuck in one of those scenarios you see in the Saw movies where you either chose to gouge your eye out to get a key to release yourself or just take the horrific death. Rather than die and go down with the ship the Jackets chose to get what they could and go into the offseason hoping to find a way to get some players.

The Jackets mortgaged this year in order to try and live last year and will pay for it by only having a cap of around 60.5 million dollars. Low on cap and not having many CPHL players the Jackets were forced to make some tough descisions. Compounding this was rumors that star defenceman Scott Niedermayer was comtemplating retirement which still has yet to be confirmed. As a result the veteran defender was moved out for young but inconsistant defender Joni Pitkanen and the top pick in the draft. Although the Jackets would owe the Sharks their first round pick in the 2008 draft should Niedermayer decide to retire. Ideally Niedermayer would play one more year and than hang them up from the Jackets perspective.

Recently the Jackets added goalies Jonas Hiller and Johan Hedberg forwards Trevor Letowski, and Jeff Freisen as well as defenceman Nolan Baumgartner via free agency. In turn it allowed the team to trade defenceman Bruno Gervais for Freddie Sjostrom waive overpaid forward Pascal Dupuis and claim Boyd Devereaux. Essentially Dupuis and his 71 OV rating coupled with his 2.6 million dollar salary leaving allowed the team to add the 71OV Sjostrom 69OV Bamgartner and 66OV Devereux to the NHL roster for the same number of dollars. So without sacrificing OV rating the team was able to add two depth players withing the budget which we feel will be important for those times in the season when other guys have 97 to 99 CON ratings and need to be scratched to get back to health but can't go on IR.

Overal the lineup looks like
Kozlov/Ruutu/Parrish
Kapanen/Hamilton/Freisen
Streit/Letowski/Sjostrom
Hoggan/Adams/Rycroft
Devereaux

Jovanovski/Pitkanen
Witt/Pothier
Sarich/Wideman
Baumgartner

Nittymaki
Hedberg
Hiller

Still a weak lineup as only the defence might qualify as being playoff calibre. But at least we have enough guys to ice a team, have our budget and roster numbers in order and can go forward from here. Our only need right now would be to add a 7th AHL defenceman but we feel we have plenty of options to do so and can be patient in addressing these needs. We still need to do a lot of work to rebuild the entire organization though we're a long ways off of where we need to be.