Dreger: Johansen trade rumours will "continue to fester"
/Darren Dreger was on TSN 1040 Tuesday afternoon.
On Jarmo Kekalainen’s comments this week on Ryan Johansen’s contract situation, and if the GM would actually nix negotiations with his best player once camp begins :
“I can’t believe he would do that and I can’t believe he’d be allowed to do that. Ryan Johansen is his best player. And when you look at the good things that have happened for the Columbus Blue Jackets, and how they’ve developed and the pieces that have seemed to fall into place – you take out that one key piece in Ryan Johansen and now all of the sudden you start to breed that element of doubt into the group.
“Now, can they survive without him? I suppose on a short term they can.
“But one thing that everybody has to understand and appreciate, and I see both sides of this equation here. I understand why Jarmo Kekalainen is getting grouchy. He’s fed up with this negotiation. He believes that the Columbus Blue Jackets are being more than fair and just doesn’t seem to be making any progress, so he’s clearly frustrated. But as much as it is a team, and you need a team dynamic to stay in place and have true success, you’re talking about independent and individual business here. And Ryan Johansen and Kurt Overhardt and all involved on the player side of this negotiation are doing exactly that. Looking after business.
“And there’ll be a fair amount of turmoil inside that group because believe this – Ryan Johansen doesn’t want to miss a second of training camp or shed any sort of negative press or light on the Columbus Blue Jackets. But he’s a business. And we saw P.K. Subban do it. We saw others do it. We’ll continue to see others do it in the future. So I get both sides of this. It can be very distasteful.”
On if he sees any scenario whereby they trade Johansen:
“No. I don’t have an inside track on that to say I’ve been told by the Columbus Blue Jackets they have no intention of trading him, but the rate of return for him would have to be very significant and would have to help the Columbus Blue Jackets immediately, because that’s what Ryan Johansen does when he’s in the lineup with this team.
“Again, you start to look at the long-term future as well when you go through this and not to use P.K. Subban as the most obvious example of that, but the P.K. Subban trade rumours were in abundance until he signed his mammoth, maximum-length deal with the Montreal Canadiens.
“So at some point, Ryan Johansen and the Columbus Blue Jackets are going to find common ground, but it’ll likely be on a bridge contract and this storyline is going to continue to fester and probably won’t go away until he signs longer-term or they decide they are going to do something like trade.”
Source: TSN 1040/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey