Some of you have opinions about this.
Sportsnet's Chris Johnston, a trusted name in the hockey journalism game, appeared on NHL Network earlier Thursday and named the Blue Jackets as a team with potential interest in Rick Nash.
In the final year of his contract – a massive deal he signed with the Blue Jackets in July 2009 – Nash is likely to be traded by the Rangers before the Feb. 26 deadline, lest they risk losing him for nothing in unrestricted free agency. Columbus has been mentioned in passing as a place Nash might want to return to later in his career, as he and his wife Jessica still have a home here and spend offseasons in central Ohio.
Could this be the time for Nash to reunite with the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2002? Any deal these days is tricky, and the Blue Jackets won't do anything crazy to acquire a 33-year-old who can still play, but whose contract is expiring and could want one more large-ish contract before he calls it a career.
But let's start here: Nash is a terrific fit for what the Blue Jackets need.
He's not a spring chicken anymore, but Nash still has that power forward frame and can move pretty well. I watched him last night against the Maple Leafs, and while the Rangers looked horrific in so many areas, Nash was probably their best forward. The Blue Jackets, starved for offense and fighting like hell to stay in the playoff picture, could use a guy who has done nothing but rack up 20-goal seasons since entering the league.
Another fact: Nash is pacing for 20-plus goals again in 2017-18, which would be the 13th time he's done so in his NHL career. That's really good.
They need to score more goals. Nash's 15 goals would be tied for most on the Blue Jackets with Josh Anderson. And when so many of their veterans aren't contributing as expected, it'd be huge to have an established player like Nash step in and add the depth required to compete in the playoffs; Nash has 15 goals and 41 points in 77 career playoff games, and has a couple of strong postseason runs under his belt.
He's still a good player. You could argue he's a really good player. His departure from Columbus shouldn't be held against him, both because it was almost six years ago and also because of what that deal helped the Blue Jackets do: make difficult but necessary changes at a critical point in their existence.
Listen, I'll never tell you how to feel or how to react, but this "burned bridge" talk around Nash is ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous. John Davidson has great respect for Nash and was on-hand to present him a gift in New York for his 1,000th career game earlier this season. Jarmo Kekalainen wasn't even the GM when Nash was dealt away to the Rangers. John Tortorella actually coached Nash with the Rangers and got a great season out of him in 2012-13.
The only folks who seem to have a problem with Nash's departure are those who don't know enough about it, or who can't see beyond the action to figure out why it occurred in the first place.
Scott Howson could've handled the situation better, i.e. by not doing it so publicly. The Blue Jackets were about to enter a massive rebuild, and entering the prime of his career, Nash thought it best if he were moved to a team with a chance to win. You only get so many chances to win in a short career, and it wasn't happening in the near future – at least with how the Blue Jackets were constructed.
Obviously, the Blue Jackets agreed. The deal they eventually made with the Rangers enabled them to retool rather than rebuild, and using the haul in said deal, were able to get into the playoffs two years later (and missed on a tiebreaker in the season immediately following the trade). Before trading Nash, they had no center depth whatsoever. Then they added Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov, Ryan Johansen developed, Alexander Wennberg came along, and things got much better.
Nash never "wanted out" of Columbus; such verbiage indicates he engineered his exit like one Jeff Carter did. That's not even remotely true. It was well-known and accepted that the two parties were best to go their separate ways if only to acquire pieces necessary to move the franchise forward, and then Davidson arrived a few months later to accelerate that plan.
The Blue Jackets have made some damn good trades in the last five years, and the Nash deal was one of them. Johansen for Seth Jones was another. Brandon Saad for Artemi Panarin can be added to that list. Howson got it started by trading a few mid-round picks for Sergei Bobrovsky.
They've built a damn good thing here, beginning with Howson's work late in his tenure, and bolstering their forward group with a guy who can score goals and draw the attention of the opposition could be huge for this potential Blue Jackets playoff run.
Hell, LeBron James left Cleveland (his hometown!) by announcing his decision on a made-for-TV special and returned home to a hero's welcome...yet we're still vilifying a player who asked to be traded, a move that wound up benefiting the Blue Jackets? Yeah, yeah, I know Rick Nash isn't LeBron. But we often forget what the trade actually did for the organization when it desperately needed something to go right.
A return to Columbus at this time also feels right for both Nash and the Blue Jackets. Imagine if he revved it up and got the Blue Jackets going down the stretch? You're not booing that.
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