John Davidson has a lot on his plate right now. He continues to recover from back surgery he had earlier in the season. But now he’s running the Blue Jackets Hockey Operations’ Department as the acting general manager.
While most of their focus has been on the beginning stages of an all-important GM search, the Blue Jackets’ front office has their sights set squarely on this week’s NHL Trade Deadline. There are some moves available to the team should the right deal come about.
Davidson stopped by on Monday morning before the Blue Jackets’ morning skate to discuss the upcoming deadline. Here is our conversation.
John Davidson Q&A
THW: So obviously the attention this week turns to the trade deadline for you. The obvious name is Jack Roslovic, but there could potentially be others. How active do you feel that your team has been to this point?
Davidson: “I think that we’ve been active in the sense that you talk to all the teams. You talk to teams that are buying or selling. You talk to teams that when they’re buying, it’s what they’re looking for. And do you have a marriage that you can work with those guys? If you have a player that they have interest in, it might not be the number-one player on their list, but it might be the number-three player. So you have to sort of domino effect everything. In our situation, we want to take care of business as best we can. You hate to lose people for nothing in the long run. So you try to do your business at the same time. We also are going to have a new general manager coming in. So you have to be cognizant of that and make sure that you don’t go do blockbuster things unless it makes a lot of sense. So my gut feeling is we’ll be fairly quiet.”
THW: You mentioned a domino effect. Toward the end of the week, I know a lot of teams will wait as they sort through the market. Maybe they go with some of the bigger names first and then see what kind of falls in after that. Do you foresee a situation where teams might try to call you closer to the deadline when there’s more clarity?
Davidson: “Yeah. There’ll be talk every day. And there’s a lot of times when people call and they’re looking for a player for a certain position. They’ll know they have three or four different players they’d like to get and they have to balance that out and also work within their confines of what the cap is for their own club. Does the player have an extra year on the contract? Does he not? It’s a complicated equation that has to fit for everybody.”
THW: Saw Carolina became a third-party broker. Is that something your team’s interested in?
Davidson: “Yeah. If it’s something that makes sense, we’d look at it. Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of teams trying to do that now. It’s quite interesting. But Sure. Our ownership has been very open with us and if there’s something that we think makes sense, we’ll throw it by them and see what they think.”
THW: How devastating is the Kent Johnson injury?
Davidson: “It’s tough. It’s tough. I just talked to Kent. He’s gonna get his shoulder taken care of this week. He’s got a good attitude about it. He’s gonna be uncomfortable for a while. But also it gives him, since it’s right now, a strong chance of getting rehab properly, get himself much stronger and prepared for next year’s training camp.”
THW: About the Monsters. You were part of the team that won it all. How important is it for them to try to parlay that success? Because eventually that could help the Blue Jackets later.
Davidson: Yeah. It’s great. I mean, we’re out of the playoffs. They’re going to be in the playoffs and not there yet for sure. But it certainly looks like it and that’s an experience. It’s games. It’s competitive hockey in a very good league. It’s entertaining. It’s hard. There’s young players. There’s older players that are physically strong and it’s intense. They have done a great job in Cleveland in a great situation playing in that building. They play on the fan support. The people there that do the ticketing business have really done a nice job jamming people into the building. They average over 10,000 people which is remarkable. So I really, really enjoy what’s been going on there.
THW: Will you get Adam Fantilli back somewhat soon?
Davidson: “He’s coming along. I don’t want Fantilli to play until he’s 100% healthy. I don’t want him at 90. I don’t want him at 95. I want him at a hundred. (There’s) too much that’s on the line with the young players. And if you force him back and rush them back, it’s a recipe for disaster. I’m on the wrong end of that recipe from my years. I’m a guy that wants him to be 100% ready when he’s ready.”
THW: Jack Roslovic is somebody that will get attention obviously being a pending UFA. You kind of referred to the fact that you don’t want to not get anything in that situation. Could you see a scenario that he could possibly stay?
Davidson: “Well, anything’s possible. There’s no question about that. It’s hard for me to sit here and say no. Or yes. But anything’s possible. Jack’s a good player. He’s from here. He can play the wing. He could play center. He kills penalties. Plays a little bit on the power play. That’s sort of a Swiss Army knife in that respect. So we’ll just see how it winds down this week.”
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THW: Team is playing better as of late. The game against the Rangers. Good game against Chicago and competitive in others. Are you noticing the team seems to be really rallying around even though you’re out of the playoffs?
Davidson: “I thought personally that we’ve been a tough out all year playing better in third periods, which is important. The team is sticking together, which I’m very, almost elated about that. Because a lot of times when you lose the hope of playoffs, things can go sideways. But this group has stuck together. Losing Fantilli didn’t help. But that’s the nature of it. We, we have a long way to go here. Our defensive play still has to be better. We’re recovering pucks in the offensive zone much better. So there’s signs, but there’s a lot of work to do. I thought the game in New York, we could have won that. We’re probably the better team the last half of the game. But it didn’t quite finish up that way. And those were good games, good experience games. We’ve gotta grind it out right through the rest of the year.”
THW: And just, can you put into your own words the excitement around a new general manager knowing that there’s a lot of interest and that there’s a lot of different ways that you could go with this based on what you’re looking for?
Davidson: “There’s been dozens and dozens of people that have put their names in, and we’ve got to sift through all that. Once we get through the deadline, we’ll start looking at that in a more measured way and work through it. It’s bittersweet, but it’s important. It’s really important as we go forward here to find the right person that’s going to help us get to the next level. We’ve got some good pieces here. It’s an ideal place for a person to come in as a general manager with a very strong and supportive ownership, with crowds that are really good, remarkably good. And with young players that are pretty darn good and could be a lot better as we move along and mature along with picks that are coming and picks that we’ve already made. It’s a really good situation and I can understand why we’ve had so much interest.”