Injury Updates: Barabanov, Blueger, Texier
The Sharks could get some help on the wing on Tuesday as Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News reports that winger Alexander Barabanov could be activated from injured reserve for their game against the Islanders. The 28-year-old didn’t play at all in the preseason due to a lower-body injury and while they were hopeful he’d be good to go for their international games, that clearly wasn’t the case. Barabanov had 39 points in 70 games last season and head coach David Quinn acknowledged that the winger could find himself on the top line in short order. San Jose has scored just six goals in four games so far this season so any help up front will certainly be welcomed.
Other injury news from around the NHL:
- Although Penguins forward Teddy Blueger has made some gradual progress as he works his way back from an undisclosed injury, he did not accompany the team to Montreal in advance of their game on Monday, notes Seth Rorabaugh of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The injury was originally suffered nearly three weeks ago and originally had a day-to-day designation but clearly, the recovery has been slower than anticipated. Fortunately for Pittsburgh, Blueger was cleared for contact in practice so his season debut should be coming in the near future.
- While Blue Jackets forward Alexandre Texier is playing in Switzerland this season, his year got off to a slow start when he broke his wrist in the first game of the year. However, Aaron Portzline of The Athletic notes (subscription link) that the 23-year-old was able to return to the lineup on Saturday which was slightly ahead of schedule while he scored in the shootout.
Alexandre Texier Signs In Switzerland
A day after the Blue Jackets revealed that forward Alexandre Texier would not be suiting up for them this season citing a need to be closer to family, he has found his team for the upcoming season as Zurich of the Swiss NLA announced they’ve inked Texier to a one-year deal.
The 22-year-old got off to a good start last season, notching 11 goals and nine assists in 36 games, already career bests. However, he suffered a finger injury back in January and then before he could return, he was granted a leave of absence from the team in March following a pair of deaths in the family. Texier did suit up for France at the World Championship in May where he picked up five points in seven games.
Officially, Texier is under suspension by Columbus which allowed them to bypass needing to pass him through waivers in order to loan him overseas. As such, the Blue Jackets will toll his existing contract which has one year left on it which will now cover the 2023-24 campaign. Between that and an agreement that also included the NHL and the NHLPA, Texier will now be able to play much closer to home to be closer to his family as he joins Zurich who intends to use him at both center and the wing next season.
Alex Texier Won’t Join Columbus Blue Jackets For 2022-23 Season
The Columbus Blue Jackets announced today that forward Alexandre Texier will not join the team for the 2022-23 season, per the advice and recommendation of the NHL/NHLPA Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program.
Texier gave the following statement on his absence from the team:
During the past year, I have experienced some personal issues and challenges and I feel I need to be close to my family at this time. I have love and respect for the city of Columbus, the Blue Jackets, and the fans as everyone has always treated me first-class. I truly appreciate the support, help and empathy I have received from team management, the coaching staff, doctors, trainers and my teammates. This was a hard decision, but it is the best one for me right now.
After sustaining a finger injury in January 2022, Texier was granted a leave of absence in March that lasted for the remainder of the 2021-22 season. He finished the year with a strong 20 points in 36 games.
Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen reiterated that Texier’s mental health and well-being remain the team’s top priority, and pledge to continue supporting the player in any way they can.
Texier will not be paid by Columbus this season, nor will his contract count against the salary cap. Per an agreement between the player, team, NHL, and NHLPA, Texier will be permitted to sign a one-year contract in Europe for the 2022-23 season to be closer to his family.
The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline reports that the final year of Texier’s contract will slide, meaning he’ll still be under contract with Columbus if he decides to return in 2023-24.
PHR continues to wish Texier well as he takes the time he needs.
Snapshots: Texier, Panthers, Devils, Wise
After missing the end of last season due to personal reasons, Blue Jackets forward Alexandre Texier is expected to be back with the team in training camp, GM Jarmo Kekalainen indicated in a press conference today (video link). The 22-year-old had a strong first half of the season, picking up 20 points (a new career-high) in 36 games before suffering a fractured finger in late January and then being granted an indefinite leave of absence back in March. Texier will be entering the final year of his contract next season and will be a restricted free agent next summer with a qualifying offer of $1.75MM so there will be a lot riding on his performance in 2022-23.
Elsewhere around the hockey world:
- The Panthers are set to hire Jamie Kompon as an assistant coach, reports Fox Sports Midwest’s Andy Strickland (Twitter link). The 55-year-old is no stranger to working behind an NHL bench having been an NHL assistant for all but two years dating back to 1997; those two years when he wasn’t in the NHL came when he was the head coach of WHL Portland. Kompon had spent the last six seasons with Winnipeg, working with Paul Maurice for most of that time so Maurice will have someone he’s quite familiar with as he embarks on his first season at the helm in Florida.
- The Devils were among the teams aggressively pursuing Matthew Tkachuk before he was eventually traded to Florida late Friday, notes TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie (Twitter link). New Jersey was expected to once again make a big splash this summer a year after handing out the biggest UFA contract to Dougie Hamilton but instead, they’ve largely opted to go with trades to add to their roster, making a trio of deals so far while Ondrej Palat received a five-year contract in free agency.
- Blackhawks prospect Jake Wise has opted to return to Ohio State for his fifth and final college season, relays Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. As a result, Chicago will retain the rights to the 22-year-old center. Wise, a 2018 third-round selection, had more points with Ohio State last season (28) than his first three with Boston University combined (17), and a similarly strong showing in 2022-23 might be enough to help him earn an entry-level deal.
Alexandre Texier To Play In World Championship
After missing the last chunk of the season, Alexandre Texier is set to return to competition. The Columbus Blue Jackets announced that Texier will compete for France at the upcoming IIHF World Championship, set to start later this month in Finland. Blue Jackets’ general manager Jarmo Kekalainen released the following statement:
Alexandre Texier reached out to let us know that he was ready to get back on the ice and asked our permission to participate in the World Championships. We were very happy to hear that he is doing well physically and mentally and ready to take this next step in his journey. We are excited that he will be representing France at the World Championships and look forward to his return to the Blue Jackets next season.
Texier, 22, last played on January 26 before missing the rest of the season due to a set of unfortunate circumstances. He broke a finger which took him out of the lineup for more than a month before the team announced in March that he was taking a leave of absence. Stating that Texier had “experienced personal losses of people very close to him,” the Blue Jackets granted the leave to return to Europe and be with his family.
Hopefully, a return to the ice at the Worlds means that Texier will also be ready for training camp later this year and can resume his blossoming NHL career. This was the first season of a two-year contract he signed last summer, which carries a cap hit of $1.525MM. In 36 games before he was injured, Texier managed to tally 11 goals and 20 points, flashing that dazzling speed and skill combination that made him such an appealing prospect.
Of course, there was also some rumbling this season about his availability in trade, though that disappeared quickly when he took his leave. It doesn’t make a ton of sense for the Blue Jackets to move a promising young forward, though they certainly do have the replacements in the pipeline. With names like Cole Sillinger, Yegor Chinakhov, and Kent Johnson all in the fold now, there’s lots of young talent up front in Columbus looking to make an impact.
France will kick off their tournament on May 13 against Slovakia.
Columbus Blue Jackets Place Boone Jenner On Injured Reserve
The Columbus Blue Jackets announced that they have placed forward Boone Jenner on injured reserve today. In a corresponding move, the team added winger Trey Fix-Wolansky from the Cleveland Monsters of the AHL on emergency recall. Jenner, the Blue Jackets’ captain, is considered week-to-week with a lower body injury.
Losing Jenner is certainly tough for the Blue Jackets, who sit 13 points back of a Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, but still consider themselves very much in the race. In addition to being their captain, Jenner also lines up as Columbus’ top center, and leads the team with 23 goals and 44 points in 59 games this season. The loss of Jenner also coincides with potential injuries to Patrik Laine and Jakub Voracek, reports The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline. Without them, Columbus loses its top three point producers, in addition to Alexandre Texier, who is currently on a leave of absence from the team.
Fix-Wolansky recently made his NHL debut for Columbus on February 8th, scoring his first NHL goal that game. The 22-year-old currently has two assists in five NHL games this year, along with an impressive 22 points in 32 games in the AHL this season. If Columbus hopes to stay in the playoff race, they will have to count on secondary options such as Fix-Wolansky.
Alexandre Texier Granted Leave Of Absence
The nightmare season for Alexandre Texier continues. The young forward has been granted an indefinite leave of absence from the Columbus Blue Jackets for personal reasons. Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen explained:
Recently, Tex has experienced personal losses of people very close to him and our priority right now is to support him in every way possible. We are going to give him the time he needs and look forward to welcoming him back to the Blue Jackets family when he is ready.
Texier, 22, hasn’t played since January because of a fractured finger, which stopped a successful season in its tracks. He had 11 goals 20 points in 36 games before the injury took him out of the lineup, with still no clear date for his return. Now, with this personal loss, it’s completely unclear when Texier will hit the ice again for the Blue Jackets.
The young French forward has scored 22 goals and 39 points in his 123-game NHL career to this point, after bursting onto the scene as a teenager in 2019. Signed through 2022-23 at a $1.525MM cap hit, he has also been included in some trade speculation, though the team has never seemed eager to move him. Something like this should put all of that speculation on pause, as the Blue Jackets and the rest of hockey support Texier while he goes through this period.
Snapshots: Kraken, Trade Bait, Senators
The Seattle Kraken are “open for business” in regards to being a third-party broker for trade deadline deals or even a parachute for bad contracts, according to general manager Ron Francis. Francis spoke with Ryan S. Clark of The Athletic and was quite clear that he has already told every other GM in the league that they are willing to spend cap space and money to acquire other assets.
Interestingly enough, he also explained, among other things, that the team is planning on being aggressive again in free agency this summer. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet happened to include a note in today’s 32 Thoughts column that he sees John Klingberg as a good fit for Seattle in the offseason when the veteran defenseman hits unrestricted free agency.
- If there is a theme to the changes on Frank Seravalli’s trade targets list for Daily Faceoff, it’s young forwards. Filip Zadina, Alexandre Texier, and Kasperi Kapanen all find themselves among the additions, with various reasons for their inclusion. Zadina especially is an interesting one, as he jumps directly to No. 12 on the list of the most likely pieces dealt, despite being on a team that would traditionally be holding onto young assets. The 22-year-old simply hasn’t been successful enough at the NHL level to this point, scoring just 22 goals and 54 points in 138 career games.
- The Ottawa Senators have opened extension talks with Nick Paul, but David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period tweets that those discussions haven’t progressed very far. The Paul situation is an odd one, given the fact that an extension with Ottawa shouldn’t be that complicated for a player with a career-high of 20 points, and will certainly conjure memories for Senators fans of the situations Mark Stone, Kyle Turris, and Erik Karlsson faced before ultimately being traded out of town.
Metropolitan Notes: Texier, Flyers, Capitals
While Blue Jackets forward Alexandre Texier was originally expected to miss four weeks with a finger injury (a time period that has come and gone), Brian Hedger of the Columbus Dispatch reports (Twitter link) that the 22-year-old is still a few weeks away from returning. Texier is having the best season of his career so far with 11 goals and nine assists in 36 games but this injury will have taken away that momentum.
Texier has found his name in recent trade speculation with teams calling about him but the injury won’t help things on that front either. On that front, Hedger adds in a follow-up tweet that the team has no interest in moving him. He has long been viewed as a future building block for the Blue Jackets and since he has shown some promising signs in his development this season, it’s understandable that they’d want to keep him around.
More from the Metropolitan:
- Prior to their game this afternoon against Washington, the Flyers announced (Twitter link) that they’ve activated winger Joel Farabee and center Derick Brassard off injured reserve. Farabee has missed a little more than a month due to an upper-body injury but is still tied for third on Philadelphia in goals with 11 in 33 games. Brassard, meanwhile, has been battling hip issues all season long but has managed to pick up 11 points in 20 games. If Brassard can stay healthy, he could be a trade candidate for a team looking to add some depth before the trade deadline. Meanwhile, Sam Carchidi of Philly Hockey Now adds that center Kevin Hayes could return late next week after being out for more than a month with an adductor injury.
- While Washington has very limited cap space that’s entirely based on Anthony Mantha’s LTIR placement, both J.J. Regan and Andrew Gillis of NBC Sports Washington believe that the Capitals need to find a way to add an impact goaltender by next month’s trade deadline. Vitek Vanecek is currently injured and while Ilya Samsonov was able to play this afternoon despite appearing to suffer an injury in the warmup, he has struggled with inconsistency this season. They’ve been previously linked to Chicago’s Marc-Andre Fleury but would likely need to get Chicago to retain half of his $7MM contract plus a third-party facilitator to take on another 25% of the contract to have a chance at fitting him into their cap structure.
Columbus Blue Jackets Taking Calls On Alexandre Texier
In the Eastern Conference, the playoff picture has looked set in stone for quite some time. Even now, with the Columbus Blue Jackets on an 8-2 run in their last ten, they’re still nine points behind the Boston Bruins for the last wild card position. That’s an impressive feat after struggling to find any consistency through the first half but it still might end up in a missed postseason, regardless of what they do in the coming weeks.
You can understand then, why teams may be calling the Blue Jackets to inquire about some of their players. Today, Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports that the team has been taking calls on Alexandre Texier for the last little while, though the asking price is still quite high. Seravalli notes that to pry Texier out of Columbus, it would take a first-round pick and a roster player.
Selected 45th overall in 2017, Texier is something of an enigma. After lighting up the Finnish league as a teenager, the French forward made the jump to North America and quickly forced his way into the Blue Jackets lineup. In 2019, he played in eight of the team’s ten playoff games at age-19, including the entire four-game sweep of the powerhouse Tampa Bay Lightning. In that deciding game four, Texier opened the scoring on the powerplay and added an empty-net goal to help seal it. He was still 19 at the time.
Since then, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly. Since the start of the 2019-20 season, Texier has ended up on injured reserve three times and has just 48 points in 121 games. There is so much obvious skill in his 6’1″ frame, but his play has been inconsistent even when he’s healthy enough to contribute.
This season, he has doubled his career goal total with 11 tallies in 36 games, but once again finds himself on the shelf due to injury. He has been out since January 26 with a broken finger, and even before that had been held scoreless in his last five games.
The key to any team’s interest in Texier–to go along with oodles of potential–is that he’s also signed for next season at a very reasonable $1.525MM cap hit. If you could add him to a talented lineup and keep him healthy, there’s a very good chance that the 22-year-old vastly outperforms that number. After this contract is finished, Texier will still be an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent, meaning it’s not anywhere near the kind of trade that will see rentals swap teams at the deadline.
Again though, the Blue Jackets are in no rush here. Just as they don’t have to make a decision about Patrik Laine until the offseason–the star sniper is a restricted free agent just one year away from the open market–they also won’t be pressured into a deal for the even-younger Texier. If the asking price is actually as high as Seravalli reports, Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen is making it very clear that he isn’t desperate to move the young forward.