Don Waddell Keeps Getting It Wrong
There’s a lot to say about Don Waddell’s offseason so far. Not much of it is positive. I think it is, simultaneously, better and worse than it feels. The ultimate outcomes are probably fine, though not good, but the process is much worse.
I’d love to recap the sequence of events leading up to this moment and offer explicit proof, but the deep dive for previous reporting was getting to be a bit much. First, I’ll start off with the bad.
The “Good Problems” with Unlucky Timing
Don Waddell has extreme struggle achieving any of his goals. He’s also quite poor at projecting the future.
When Waddell arrived, the Blue Jackets were in a weird spot. He said he was too old to rebuild, which suggests ownership agreed that the Blue Jackets needed to move forward. He spent that offseason carving out future cap-space only for it to backfire spectacularly for good reasons(breakout years), a potentially predictable one (cap explosion) and for a single grave one too (the unfortunate death of Johnny Gaudreau).
Waddell signed Kent Johnson to a low-dollar three year deal where Johnson said “The goal is to be significantly underpaid on this contract” (not Johnson’s exact words, apologies). Kent Johnson then has a monster offseason and runs away with PP1 duties while putting up an excellent play-driving season. He forms excellent chemistry with Fantilli and James van Riemsdyk (who for some reason is allowed to depart).
Signing Kirill Marchenko to a low dollar deal took an inexplicable amount of time. Reportedly, Waddell was checking in with all of his staff to get a measure of Marchenko’s character. The reviews all came up stellar only for Waddell to chicken out of a long term bet. I definitely understand not projecting Kirill Marchenko to be this good this fast, and I have no information on what longer term contract he would have signed, but I don’t understand the point of doing due diligence and not utilizing the feedback.
These deals were made with fine information at the time and have, at this current moment, backfired as hard as they possibly could have. While Kent Johnson and Kirill Marchenko breakouts are great, it’s better to have good players than bad ones, it comes at specifically the worst time possible with the cap exploding. There’s time between now and their first available extension dates, which could be useful if they fall back to earth a little bit. Maybe the certainty provided with the short term deals is worth their future compensation.
Both players have earned significant TOI and important roles which means their low dollar value makes it extremely difficult to spend the savings created by giving them low dollar in the first place. Not an easy prediction for Kent Johnson, who was firmly behind Johnny Gaudreau in all the same roles on the depth chart, but Kirill Marchenko was given the spot next to Gaudreau and Monahan both on and off the ice.
Don Waddell created a small window by underpaying these players prior to breakout seasons but he has spent the next few months failing to capitalize on the window of competitive advantage created by them ($20 million cap at the deadline doesn’t roll over to an advantage).
The Failed Promises
Don Waddell paid a 2nd round pick to get Jordan Harris and move Patrik Laine to Montreal. A team that used his talents, his powerplay one-timer nearly exclusively, to beat them to the playoffs. While doing so, he was on record saying that there were deals with retention or in taking contracts back and he preferred to pay to move the entirety of the deal.
It was a win/win for both of us. For us to clear up $8.7 million cap space gives us a lot of options. My phone started ringing the day we made the trade with teams cause there’s lot of teams that are in cap problems that are trying to move players.
He mentioned explicitly that he’d be in contact with teams that wanted to move contracts and projected that he’d get more than a second back in facilitating deadline deals or taking on bad contracts.
Heading into this offseason, Don Waddell wanted to be aggressive in shaping his team from the red-line back. He had plenty of objectives and desires to improve his club:
Waddell is looking to upgrade the Blue Jackets at just about every position on the ice. In no particular order, he’d like:
A right-side defenseman who could log top-four minutes to help balance the Blue Jackets’ back end
A top-six or top-nine winger who could help boost one of the NHL’s top emerging forward groups
A right-shot center for the third of fourth line who can excel at faceoffs
A veteran goaltender to partner with young Jet Greaves, who will be making the leap to the NHL next season
So far, and let’s be clear there’s still time left, Don Waddell has only accomplished a single goal and has not reshaped the team from the red-line back whatsoever. He has literally brought back the entire D corps.
"I look at the goals against. Goals against was one of the worst in the East. You tighten that up, and you get a few saves here or there, and you can knock 40 goals off your goals against pretty easy."
This is a quote from Waddell’s introductory press conference. Waddell was honestly mostly correct here, the Blue Jackets knocked off 30 goals against and went from second worst to eighth worst. Let’s be clear though, eighth worst isn’t good. When asked if, given what he said in April, he’d be happy with his offseason moves.
We didn’t start that way. We lost Guddy, we picked up Fabbro on waivers and we brought Mateychuk up after thirty games and I think he and Provy had a great tandem.
Overall with out defenense is healthy for the year, having Mateychuk play, Fabbro come in here, Werenski continuing on his way, I think we’re much better defensively.
I don’t explicitly disagree that a healthy defense is a good thing for the Blue Jackets, and could help the numbers look better, but being “much better” while having all of the same players is a bit rich. Perhaps Erik Gudbranson and Ivan Provorov aren’t the players they’ve been for the past 8 years and are actually, really just better now. Mateychuk should grow, he had some nice underlying skills but really struggled to create and win his minutes.
Really, the team is relying on Werenski’s past season being the new normal while the team is just more expensive all around.
"I love the draft and I love the trade deadline," Waddell said. "Not crazy about July 1 because some of the worst decisions in all of hockey are made on July 1, and I just don't want to be a part of that."
I presume I don’t really need to connect these dots. He chickened out of the trade deadline for vibes reasons, he struck out making major deals at the draft, and here he found himself July 1 negotiating the bonus structure of a player.
"I've been 'educated' by every agent I talk to. Just because the player was worth $3 million last year doesn't mean he's now worth $4 million because the cap went up."
Hilarious, then, that Don Waddell was one of the only General Managers to overpay a player in-line with the rising cap. (Provorov’s new cap hit is identical in Cap% to his old one which is funny because he’s the same player as he was then just older). Mitch Marner signed for below market! Vladislav Gavrikov signed for less. Florida had plenty of shenanigans but Ekblad signed for much less as well. K’Andre Miller, a 25 year old, signed for less than Provorov.
Seems as if most teams, perhaps outside of Washington paying a ton for Jakob Chychrun, avoided the “sticker shock” deals that were widely predicted.
What It All Means
I will get more into the specific implications of the lack of player movement and strategy in a second, it might not be as bad as some of this suggests, but I think it’s highly concerning that Don Waddell has repeatedly been unable to achieve his objectives and has deteriorated the Blue Jackets’ future positioning.
He’s been plenty unlucky, to be sure, but he has also possessed literally no acumen to avoid luck in the first place. There are simple logical principles that Waddell has outright avoided. Why pay to move Laine’s full cap hit and hope to get a bad contract back instead of just not paying and getting a bad conract back in the same deal?
He did not take back any bad contracts for value. He did not facilitate any deals for value. He did not reshape his team at the deadline or buy extra currency to reshape it, he did not actualize the groundwork for any deals at the draft. He did not add a right side defender (in-fact subtracted one mid-season), he did not add a top six wing. He did make one of the worst decisions in all of hockey on July 1.
Waddell was outcompeted for a good player by his protege in Carolina. Either he didn’t think K’Andre Miller was good, didn’t have the stomach for the asking price or didn’t have a prospect that NYR preferred to Scott Morrow. Tulsky managed a team that made the Eastern Conference Final and is somehow winning futures prices against an “up-and-coming” club. Funny how trading Provorov for assets during the trade deadline would have probably yielded the ammuniation to win both or either of the Dobson and Miller trades.
Either Don Waddell isn’t thinking much before talking to the media or he’s getting unlucky and outcompeted for his goals. Neither of those seem like good predictors of future success for a general manager. He gets paid milllions to put the Blue Jackets in a good position, not to pivot endlessly and have sleepless nights while failing to get results.
Searching for the Silver Lining
The problem that I ultimately have with the signing has everything to do with Ivan Provorov the player. He’s not a role fit for Evason’s system. He isn’t a great skater, is a terrible neutral zone defender and is so slow in making decisions he fundamentally undermines the Blue Jackets’ ability to create offense.
In his press conference, I observed a player with an almost delusional level of self belief. Sometimes, that’s useful for athletes who must maintain outragerous confidence. He thought he and Werenski were a top three pair in the NHL during their time together, which is completely incorrect (they were at best ranked 13th in GF%), and thought no one could have played the right side than him any better.
In other metrics, like xGF% or CF%, Werenski and Provorov were a good pair but nowhere near the top pairs. In fact, they were nearly identical to Werenski-Fabbro which is curious because that player is getting paid less than half.
If I’m betting on a player to insulate the locker room well, it’s not someone with these sort of opinions about their own play. Perhaps my already poor opinion of him is coloring my continued interpretations of his words.
His contract extends through such a time that it seems hard to reconcile this decision with what we observed from Waddell’s time in Carolina. That team moved on from signing Brady Skjei to a long term contract, while in a contention window, because he would be on a downward performance curve relative to his signing. Why can Carolina operate on a ruthless cap-efficiency model that respects aging curves and relentlessly avoids bad-money and the non-yet-competitive Blue Jackets not?
Side note, Waddell has been done poorly by ownership and Jarmo Kekelainen. It’s absolutely rich that Kekelainen didn’t want to sign Gavrikov to a long term extension because “he would have been too old at the end”. Furthermore, if ownership had fired Kekelainen during the Babcock debacle and given a new GM time to learn the roster during a lame-duck season perhaps plenty different decisions could have been made (Waddell would not have been eligible to be hired at that time, the leading candidates would have likely been Tulsky or Darche).
The same goes for Provorov, who really shouldn’t be expected to be anything other than what he was last year.
Will he age well? Probably, it’s not like he’s a burner right now.
Ultimately, Don Waddell is right. At least partially. The Blue Jackets should be better next season, at least relative to their team, from a goals against perspective. I fundamentally disagree with his assessment of Ivan Provorov and the utility of the contract he just signed, but Provorov wasn’t the issue with the defense (his immobile high dollar contract might be an opportunity cost issue 3 or 4 years from now, but too late for that).
The issue was Jack Johnson, Jake Christiansen and to a lesser extent Jordan Harris. Erik Gudbranson didn’t play (though I tremendously hope that Don Waddell isn’t counting on him being a positive contributor, which hasn’t been observed in years) so he can’t be that negative. David Jiricek didn’t really play but I wonder if the continued poor performances of the defense colors any of his play in hindsight.
The worst offenders from a defensive perspective were Adam Fantilli and Cole Sillinger outside of those poor defensemen. Those two had a big impact on allowing goals as young centers, one who was played well above his head. From a big picture perspective, improving their minutes and not allowing these well-below replacement defensemen to play is the best way to improve the Blue Jackets for 2024-2025.
Ivan Provorov is wildly overpaid and though I vehemently dislike a great deal about his game and think he’s absolutely not no-risk (look at nz defending and puck retrieval risk), it’s better to have this mediocre defenseman than risk having a couple of atrocious ones.
Edmonton made the cup final with Darnell Nurse who is a marginally better defenseman than Provorov but whose cap hit has been much more of an issue.
Provorov’s cap hit is high, and the trade protection completely egregious, but there are a couple of angles where the player doesn’t harm the Blue Jackets.
In this article I laid out some of the scenarios for the Blue Jackets’ future cap situation. I added Owen Power and Jordan Kyrou to the roster as high-dollar placeholders so that we could examine how much the Blue Jackets can spend without endangering Kent Johnson and Kirill Marchenko’s presumably large next deals.
With these deals in place, which should represent big overpays to Fabbro and Greaves (not to mention Brindley and maybe Hunt/Pyyhtia), the Blue Jackets still had $33 million to sign Johnson, Marchenko and Mateychuk. I’m a huge believer in Denton but I really don’t see a player of his type earning a large contract.
In any case, Ivan Provorov’s extension now comes in at a similar dollar value as Owen Power’s current salary. Sure he’s a worse player with limited room to grow but the numbers are going to play out the same and he’s here instead of on Buffalo. If Severson bounces back the value gained by his contract looking better and better might even outweigh Provorov’s overpay.
Since Waddell didn’t have the courage or acumen to bet on finding a 4/5D replacement, we have what we have. I’d prefer to have paid the assets to add K’Andre Miller, who I think fits a big role now and will still be performing through the first bit of Fantilli’s prime, but the point is that this isn’t going to damage the Blue Jackets’ ability to retain their current players.
Fundamentally, Don Waddell is correct that next season will be dictated by the internal growth of the players. He’s correct that the Blue Jackets should be better from Fantilli growth and Charlie Coyle taking too-difficult minutes away from Cole Sillinger.
Last season he hardly did his job in making moves, and failed to help the team get into the playoffs, and hid behind the togetherness of the lockerroom as justification. This offseason, he’s once again failed to significantly improve the roster and is this time hiding behind the growth potential of the kids on the roster.
I would have liked for him to bring in some veterancy or extra talent that would help accentuate the next step and insure against the likely on-ice shooting regression but it doesn’t change that this team in the immediate future will only go as far as Kent Johnson, Adam Fantilli, Kirill Marchenko and Denton Mateychuk can take them. Werenski and Monahan are performing at the top of their games but you can only get so far with two players.
Waddell remains trying to thread the needle between competitive windows while doing as little as possible outside of making picks and signing the highest bust contract in free agency.
The Slightly Improved Worst Case Scenario
I don’t really want to write about this but an unexpected benefit of Provorov’s long extension might come in insuring against the worst case scenario. The Blue Jackets couldn’t capitalize on the momentum that saw them nearly miss on the playoffs, and it appears that Montreal has stolen every bit of market and vibes advantage, so the worst case scenario is that regression hits the Blue Jackets who spin their tires and end up in the mushy middle.
Zach Werenski, Sean Monahan, Kirill Marchenko, Kent Johnson, Dmitri Voronkov, Denton Mateychuk are probably too good to let the Blue Jackets be in super high pick range again. If they stall out, the momentum of being a young and exciting team, done especially poorly if Marchenko and Johnson regress or Fantilli doesn’t take a step, and now the league-wide narrative changes to this being the next Buffalo or Detroit.
Maybe this sounds extra doom and gloom but I’m put on edge by some Werenski specific comments.
“I’m really happy for Jonesy,” Werenski said. “With his situation in Chicago, it obviously wasn’t the best with what was going on there. For him to get a fresh start and be reunited with Billy and Bob and be part of that team in Florida, it’s awesome.
“And, in a way, you wish that was you. I texted (Jones) after (Tuesday’s Game 6), just saying how much he deserved it. But that adds more motivation, right? You want to be in that position after seeing one of your friends there. It was the same with Savvy (David Savard) when we traded him to Tampa Bay (2021).
“You’re so happy for him, but deep down you’re like, ‘F—, I kinda want that to be me.'”
“Last year was a great year for us, but we fell short of the playoffs. Next season, the expectations are going to be higher.”
If the team stalls and Waddell can’t find any moves to get them over the top, does Werenski seek greener pastures? I think planning for a retool was already likely. Most teams get to the playoffs and then require some changes to really get them over the top into big contention windows. Florida retooled, Vegas added some superstar talent after reaching the final, Tampa needed plenty of time before they figured out how to build around their top flight players. See what Carolina is doing right now.
In this case, Provorov’s ultra-long deal with movement protection might be nice insulate for a potential Werenski departure. What Provorov’s minute munching buys is a player who is used to being punished for playing over his head and really doesn’t seem to mind it. That means the next wave of players, Denton Mateychuk and Jackson Smith, can be brought into the NHL at a reasonable pace without assuming too much responsibility too quickly. Fantilli and Kent Johnson get some more time and the window of contention alongside Cayden Lindstrom becomes even more of a priority.
This, of course, assumes Provorov has the requisite character to stick through his contract and not also ask out. There’s no indication that Werenski really wants to win somewhere else, and no indication that Mateychuk and Smith will be the defensemen that he has become, but it’s a thought worth considering.
Before we go too far down that road, remember that there’s a long time between now and this hypothetical stall out and there are great reasons to bet on the young dynamic players already on the roster.
If the kids pick up next season where they left off, Waddell won’t have any excuses come the trade deadline. Who knows, there’s still plenty of time left this offseason and plenty of good players still to be had.
Grim stuff. But you were right to say it!
Thank you. Reading this was cathartic.