If you look at the recent history of the Columbus Blue Jackets, it’s just a long litany of wrong choices.
The wrong choice behind the bench last summer – Mike Babco*ck – contributed greatly to general manager Jarmo Kekalainen losing his job. Many wrong, or at least questionable, choices have been made in the draft. There have been many wrong choices over who to pay and how much. Defenseman Damon Severson probably tops the current charts (at a $6.25 million AAV), but the Elvis Merzlikins, Patrik Laine and Johnny Gaudreau contracts might give him a run for his money. My colleague Aaron Portzline nicely summed up many of the missteps in March.
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Accordingly, when it came time to hire a new head of hockey operations, the Blue Jackets had a chance to follow a bad organizational habit and make another misstep or sidestep.
Instead, they made a good choice, a thoughtful choice, someone who – based on his recent history – has a chance to finally get the Blue Jackets on the right track.
They went with Don Waddell, introduced Wednesday at a press conference as the team’s new president of hockey operations and general manager. John Davidson, who held the former title for 10 of the past 12 years and was acting as interim GM, will step back from day-to-day operations but remain a senior advisor and alternate governor.
There were a number of important takeaways from Waddell’s introductory press conference, including the fact that after he resigned from his previous post with the Carolina Hurricanes last Friday, he had overtures from three NHL teams. According to Waddell, a previous relationship with Blue Jackets president Mike Priest — and the things he heard from Priest about the Columbus organization — made his decision easy.
Philosophically, Waddell painted an optimistic picture, noting some similarities between Columbus today and Carolina when he took over there as general manager in 2018. After failing to qualify for the previous nine, the Hurricanes made the playoffs in each of Waddell’s six full years as GM.
If you examine the Hurricanes’ history prior to that time, you’ll see a pattern of frustration and poor results that mirrors that of Columbus.
From the 1992-93 season, when the Carolina franchise was still operating in Hartford, until 2017-18, a span of 25 years, the Whalers/Hurricanes missed the playoffs 20 times and lost in the first round twice. For Carolina, the only year with 100 points or more came in 2005-06 when, coming out of the lockout, they unexpectedly won the Stanley Cup.
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When Tom Dundon took over from Peter Karmanos Jr. as the Hurricanes’ owner in 2018, he brought in a different operational approach. He was completely hands-on. He wanted to run the organization as a business. He wanted to know, specifically, why things were done the way they were. It wasn’t enough to answer “because that’s the way they were always done in the past.”
In short, it wasn’t a job for the faint of heart.
It wasn’t a managerial structure that everyone could adapt to.
It was unconventional — but it worked.
Under the hierarchy of Dundon, Waddell, assistant GM Eric Tulsky and coach Rod Brind’Amour, the Hurricanes have developed into a model NHL franchise. They spend prudently (and mostly wisely). They aren’t afraid to make tough decisions — and let people explore other options. They’ve made offer sheets to restricted free agents, a traditional no-no in NHL circles. They’ve found players on the NHL scrap heap — Stefan Noesen, Jordan Martinook — and turned them into viable contributors. They’ve taken on bad contracts (Patrick Marleau from Toronto) and turned the draft-choice compensation into core pieces (Seth Jarvis).
It’s turned them into the most unpredictable of NHL franchises, but it’s hard to argue with their success.
Since the 2017-18 season, only the Boston Bruins (.695) have a better regular-season winning percentage than Carolina (.664). Tampa Bay is No. 3, Colorado is No. 4. Columbus is 24th.
Waddell did a nice job of tiptoeing around the challenges of working for Dundon.
When I asked him what he could take from those experiences, he prefaced his remarks by noting how “if you look at sports in general, most of the new owners coming into the league, they’re younger than ever because of the amount of money. These people have done well in their careers to get into sport. They think differently.
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“Tom and I worked together for six years. We had lots of discussions. We had lots of debates. We were always supportive of each other when a decision was made, whether it was his decision, his feelings or mine.
“One thing I learned with Tom was, just think outside the box. We get stuck sometimes in our minds. I was running the business side, too, and he’d always say, ‘Maybe there’s a better way to do that.’ In the same way, he’d say, ‘Maybe there’s a better way to build your team.’ Tom and I are on good terms. I used to talk to him eight to 10 times a day when I worked for him. I still talk to him two to three times a day, even though I don’t work for him. It’s all good.”
Carolina was known for its culture, but Waddell clarified that, to him, “Culture is an overused word. It’s important and critical, but you can’t just say, ‘OK, we’re going to have this culture.’ It doesn’t work that way. It takes time, and everybody’s got to be on board — I’m talking right down from the locker room, the trainers, the equipment managers, obviously the coaches, the players, and the staff that’s surrounding the team. If you’re not on the same page, it’s not going to work. And if you are on the same page, it just builds. That’s critical to our success. I think about that all the time.”
Waddell went on to note: “With the players currently on the (Columbus) roster, and knowing how this organization runs, the ownership gives you all the tools and resources to make it work. That’s a driver, too. I’ve been here since 11 o’clock and the things we’ve seen in less than two hours — and how they do things — it’s mind-boggling, because I’m not used to that.”
Some nuts-and-bolts questions were asked and answered. Concerning the Blue Jackets’ coaching staff, Waddell acknowledged that he’d met with Pascal Vincent for three minutes on the morning of the press conference, but that was the first time they’d ever spoken. He plans to sit down with him in the next couple of weeks to get better acquainted, and while sorting out who is behind the bench next year is important, other matters may be more pressing.
“I only know him as a coach from watching his team,” Waddell said. “It’s the first time I’ve actually met him. So, I need some time with him and the staff.
“I can put timetables on the draft because we know when that’s going to happen. End of June. We know free agency is going to start July 1. As we work things with the group, we’ll get some answers.”
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Waddell’s lengthy experience came up – and that’s worth discussing here because experience tends to be a broad, all-encompassing term that, nowadays, is sometimes characterized as a bad thing. Fact is, just putting in the years doesn’t make one an effective leader. But learning to adapt to changing times does. I like the fact that he found a way to work with an unorthodox owner who presented some different ways of doing business. He could have just stayed as an old-timey hockey guy, saying, “We need to keep doing things the old-fashioned way” — though he probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did if he’d taken that approach.
Instead, Waddell found a way not just to make it work, but to make it thrive.
“When we took over in Carolina, it was the same as here,” Waddell said. “We had some pieces. It wasn’t as if we had to blow it all up. There are enough good things there (that), if we figure out why the record was what it was last year, I think we can fix that pretty quick.”
Good health will help. Improved goaltending will help. Having the No. 4 choice in next month’s draft potentially will give them another foundational piece.
Waddell said he wouldn’t have taken the Blue Jackets’ opportunity at this point in his career if he didn’t think he could make a difference.
“One person isn’t fixing everything,” he cautioned.
“You come into a new situation — what I (might) see from the outside as things that are strengths or weaknesses, I could be completely wrong.
“That’s going to be the fun part for me — getting to know everybody. If we have to make some changes, we’ll make those decisions and move on.”
The key is to think long-term.
“We’ve got to make strategic moves, moves that are going to make our hockey club not just better today but better in the future,” he said. “This isn’t about trying to make the playoffs for one year and make a run and then be on the outside for a long time.
“The great thing is, there are a lot of smart hockey people in this organization. We’re going to count on everybody and make decisions as a group, and get this figured out.”
(Photo of Don Waddell: Jaylynn Nash / NHLI via Getty Images)
Eric Duhatschek is a senior hockey writer for The Athletic. He spent 17 years as a columnist for The Globe and Mail and 20 years covering the Calgary Flames and the NHL for the Calgary Herald. In 2001, he won the Elmer Ferguson Award, given by the Hockey Hall of Fame for distinguished hockey journalism, and previously served on the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee. Follow Eric on Twitter @eduhatschek
