From The Silky Mitten State: a meditation on Jarmo Kekäläinen's 11-year term as GM of the Blue Jackets

Last week, the Columbus Blue Jackets fired Jarmo Kekäläinen, their general manager of 11 years and the architect of the only team in franchise history to win a playoff series.

The timing was a bit peculiar, coming in the midst of a season that had been more or less hopeless for months already.  However, Columbus brass evidently decided they did not want Kekäläinen to run their trade deadline and that he must be removed immediately.

On the most recent episode of The Silky Mitten State, my co-host Connor Earegood and I discussed Kekäläinen's tenure with the Blue Jackets.  We debated the relative successes of his regime, with Connor highlighting the fact that Kekäläinen left the franchise in a better place than he found it (including that playoff series victory over the then Presidents' Trophy-winning Lightning in 2019).

However, I had a different read on Kekäläinen's tenure.  Specifically, I believe the Kekäläinen era is defined by a lack of ambition and a willingness to accept mediocre results as the maximum to which the franchise could aspire.  Of course, being a small market, relatively new team in the NHL, Columbus has some natural limitations to deal with.

Despite that, Kekäläinen did manage to sign Johnny Gaudreau as a free agent and trade for then extend Patrik Laine, both of them bona fide stars—dispelling the notion that great players would never come to Columbus.  And yet Kekäläinen never managed to put together a team that could make it past the second round, and even a small market team, in my estimation, has to have a higher standard of achievement.

Here's a sample of our conversation:

For full episodes of The Silky Mitten State, go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify:

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