Waddell pleased after a busy opening day of the NHL draft

If you had asked Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell before the 2025 NHL Draft how he felt about holding on to his two first-round picks, he admitted he would’ve been disappointed to do so.

But that was before Friday night.

When the first round was all said and done, two massive additions were made to the Blue Jackets prospect pool in defenseman Jackson Smith at pick No. 14 and goaltender Pyotr Andreyanov at pick No. 20.

To Waddell, bringing in one of the top skaters and the top goalie on their draft board made all the potential disappointment melt away.

“After we've gotten through these selections, to end up with these two players, I think we're pretty happy with that,” Waddell said.

CBJ DRAFT HUB: Follow the NHL draft at BlueJackets.com/Draft

The excitement began long before the pick of Smith – earlier on Friday, the Blue Jackets dealt Gavin Brindley, their 2025 third-round pick and a 2027 conditional second-rounder to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for right-shot center Charlie Coyle and forward Miles Wood.

Waddell indicated that the chatter from the general managers around the league was that draft picks weren’t going to be traded for players, and pick-for-pick swaps were the deals that were going to happen once 7 p.m. hit. With that in mind, making the early swing for Coyle and Wood – who have 23 NHL seasons and 1,563 games played between them –made sense.

“(Wood) brings a lot of energy to our fourth line, and he can play up into the third line,” Waddell said. “And then with Coyle, we've been – on faceoffs – a lefty team, and we wanted to get a righty. Obviously a big body and plays a 200-foot game on both ends of the ice, very responsible. We've been looking for that right-shot guy all summer, so when that opportunity came up, we had to jump on it.”

Once the draft began, the commotion didn’t stop. Waddell said he was unsuccessful in trying to move up in the draft order and also received a bunch of calls about his 14th overall pick. Ultimately, he held onto it, but what he got at that spot was not what he had anticipated.

“We had him really high on our list,” Waddell said of Smith. “I mean, we would have never, ever predicted he would be there at 14.”

Smith, who spent 2024-25 with the Tri-City Americans in the WHL and will head to Penn State next season to play college hockey, was a player the Blue Jackets were surprised to see fall to their slot in the draft. Smith’s 54 points in the regular season (11 goals and 43 assists) led all draft-eligible WHL defensemen.

At 6-foot-4, Smith doesn’t let his size impede his skating ability – multiple CBJ scouts that observed his play rated his skating a 10, which Waddell noted “happens very rarely.”

The announcement of the two CBJ draft picks was made by Meredith Gaudreau, which Waddell said was a decision by the organization. Smith had nothing but glowing things to say about the once-in-a-lifetime experience of hearing his name called.

“Just to see the support in the stands and the crowd for the Gaudreau family … it was an incredible moment, so to be picked right after that felt even extra special for me,” Smith said. “And getting to meet her and talking to her was really cool. I was super grateful for that and to be selected at that time, too. It was a super cool experience for me.”

And while the offers were ringing in at pick No. 14, Waddell was confident in the decision to hold on to the pick.

“I really believe if there’s a player there that you really want, don't pass it up. Take him,” Waddell said.

The same could be argued for the Blue Jackets’ next selection at No. 20. Although Andreyanov was not predicted to get selected in the first round, the top-ranked international goaltender by NHL Central Scouting was a player CBJ couldn’t pass on.

Waddell said that the plan for his staff was to select a goalie in the first round. When Andreyanov was available, they snagged him, not just because he was the top netminder in their eyes but because he was the next player overall on the team’s draft list.

Andreyanov is not the largest goalie at 6-0½, and he wasn’t at the NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo. But Blue Jackets scouts watched the Volsk, Russia, native on video and had the opportunity to watch him and person and speak to him at a showcase earlier this month, learning about who he was off the ice.

On the ice, he posted a dominant season with Krasnaya Armiya of the junior-level MHL, going 23-6-6 with a 1.75 GAA and .942 save percentage.

“Now I'm not a goalie expert ... but our goalie guys, (goalie coach Niklas Backstrom) and Brad Thiessen and Jimmy Viers all said, by far, they thought this was the best guy,” Waddell said. “He’s very athletic. Every kid that we talked to down there … we always ask them this question: ‘If you had one player and that you could, from here, take with you to your next team,’ and 90 percent of the players said Pyotr.”

The plan is for both Smith and Andreyanov to be in Columbus for development camp next week. That will be after day two of the draft, where the Blue Jackets currently have five more selections to make after the trade for Coyle and Wood – one pick in each of the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds (109, 160 and 173, respectively) and two in the seventh round (205 and 218). Day two is slated to begin at 12 p.m.