Life has come fast for Blue Jackets president of hockey operations and general manager Don Waddell in his first season in charge.
In just over eight months since he was hired, Waddell has selected a new head coach, oversaw his first draft, added six regulars to the CBJ roster, shepherded the Blue Jackets through a trying offseason, made a major trade, and watched as his team has defied the experts to be in the playoff race with a third of the season to go.
It’s a lot of ground to cover, but we gave it our best shot. BlueJackets.com sat down with Waddell on Thursday to get his thoughts on the squad at the 4 Nations break, from what he’s learned about the organization to his thoughts on the team’s success this season to how he’ll approach the upcoming trade deadline.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Now that you’re midway through your first season, you’ve gotten a chance to get to know the city and the fanbase. What have you figured out about the fans and this team and this organization so far?
“I sensed it last year, but the loyalty and the commitment from not just our fans but the whole city to root on the Blue Jackets has been tremendous. What I really like is everybody has been really welcoming wherever you go, and people have been very appreciative of how things are going. It’s not always winning or losing, but how things have been handled through some tough situations. I just can’t say enough about our support and the people I’ve had the opportunity to meet. It’s been tremendous.”
We see you on the concourse all the time interacting with fans. How have those conversations helped inform you to learn about what the fan base is all about?
“I like to get out and talk to our fans. Our last road trip in Vegas and Utah, a saw a lot of our fans out there, which was nice. You get people’s feelings not only about the team but about other things, too, on the business side. And that’s what I’m here for. I’m not going to have all the answers, but I can at least find out for them.
“To a person, everyone has been very complimentary toward the coaching staff and the players’ commitment. I don’t know if I’ve heard one negative all season about lack of effort. That was something we’ve said all along – we might not be the most talented team in the league, but we can be the hardest working team in the league. There’s only a couple of games I can think of that I didn’t think we were the hardest working team.”
That leads into my next question. A lot of that goes back to head coach Dean Evason and the staff he’s assembled. You had an important decision to make in that regard when you first got here, but it seems like it’s worked out pretty well. What’s impressed you the most about the staff?
“When I got here at the end of May, I went through a process with (former head coach Pascal Vincent) and decided to make that change. Media started asking me every week, ‘When are you going to hire a coach?’ I said, ‘We have the draft coming up, we have free agency coming up.’ The league wasn’t changing those dates for me. I didn’t want to make a rushed decision on the coaching. I wanted to make sure we did all of our homework on all the guys we were talking about. And every time I talked to Dean and then when I interviewed Dean, the passion he had not just to coach in the NHL but to coach the Blue Jackets, that stuck with me every time. He wanted to be the head coach of the Blue Jackets.
“And then when he started to assemble a staff, we brought three or four of the guys back from last year and then added a couple of new guys. I was very happy with those decisions. As we sat and talked to all of those people, everybody had the same common goal. And as we look here halfway through the season, the coaching staff is very close-knit. They do a lot of stuff together. They have each other’s support. There’s nobody ruffling feathers behind the scenes. I say the same thing about players – we want good players, we want good coaches, but we want good people. Good people take you a long way, and I really think we have that here.”
I think you can say the same thing about the guys on the ice as well – they’re close-knit, they’re good people, fun to be around. What’s impressed you most about the way they’ve performed this season?
“We had to add some players in the beginning of the year because we were short – James van Riemsdyk and Jack Johnson, Kevin Labanc, we picked up Dante Fabbro. We had to make sure I knew all of those players. I knew most of them as people, but I wanted to double-check and make sure their character and the type of person they were was going to fit in our locker room. That played a part in a lot of our decisions. We passed on a few guys I didn’t think would fit in there. I think that’s been important.
“The most impressive thing with this team is how tight they are together. Boone (Jenner) and (Erik Gudbranson) are leaders on this team and unfortunately both got hurt, but they’re around all the time while we’re at home. Other guys have stepped up – Zach Werenski, Sean Monahan, Mathieu Olivier. Not everybody is a leader, and it doesn’t mean it’s bad that you’re not a leader, but when tough times hit you, that’s when you see your true leaders step up. I certainly give a lot of credit to those guys for keeping this group together.”
I was looking back at your introductory press conference and one of the things you talked about was culture. Everybody talks about that, but you don’t get through some of the things this team has gone throughout without having a good culture. What have you noticed as you’re trying to build that?
“Culture is an overused word. I’ve said that multiple times. You can’t just say we’re going to have a good culture. You have to play the role, act the role, and the role continues to form the culture you want, but it’s lead by example. I think it starts at the top, all the way down to the trainers, everybody in the locker room, and eventually the players are a big part of that. But we all have to be on the same page, and one of the big things I always talk about is no individuals can have success without the team having success first. We live by that motto on a daily basis, and I think the team has done a good job to this point. That’s carried us a long way this year. There’s other things that have carried us also, too, but I can’t say enough about the leadership that we have and how the whole group has really come together. You go on the road, you see them together all the time. They go do different things like the curling the one time in Winnipeg. It’s just good to see.”
When you took this job, one of the things that had to be pretty exciting was the group of young players that had been drafted highly and gotten their feet wet at the NHL level. It seems like all of those guys have taken big steps this year. How exciting is that for the future of this franchise?
“Unbelievable. I said at the press conference, the cupboards aren’t bare. Do we have some work to do? 100 percent, but there’s some pieces here that we can continue to build on. We’ve put guys in a position – this is two parts. We’ve put guys in a position where it’s like a test to see how they’re going to do in that position. If they pass the test, they stay in that position and they keep growing. If they don’t pass the test, then they have to earn their way back to it.
“As we talk about the young guys, almost to a man, we gave them that opportunity and they’ve taken advantage of that. That’s what we can do as management and as coaches is provide the structure and the opportunity, and it’s up to the player. I don’t care if you’re drafted in the first round, if you’re drafted in the fifth round. It’s up to the players to take advantage of that.”
You mentioned some of the veteran guys that you brought in early in the season. You look at being a young team, you need some of those guys that have been there before, and we’ve seen the impact that those veterans have had on the team. Was that something you really focused on in the offseason was making sure you had those guys that can show the way?
“Yeah. We were thrown some curves right off the bat, which created opportunities. When Zach Aston-Reese was put on waivers, we had that opportunity. I knew the player. I had him in training camp one year. I knew what kind of person he is. But I said before, we needed players and we needed players that could contribute, but we also needed really good people. The guys we brought in here have been everything we could ask for.”
I’ll ask you the question you probably get asked the most these days. The trade deadline is coming up, and this is obviously a long-term build, but you have to be enthused by the fact the team is in the race. How do you handle where you are at right now?
“I think right now, short term, I’m looking to see – and this has probably changed in the last week and a half – if we can add something up front to help this group right now because of the (Kirill) Marchenko and Monahan losses. Are we going to pay a high price for a rent-a-player? No, but if we get somebody that has some term left or a player that we think would fit well into our roster that we don’t have to give up assets that I'm not willing to give up – I think if we can do that, it would be something that would send a message not only to the players and the coaches but our 5th Line support, saying that we’re trying to do something.
“Saying that, a lot of teams are trying to do that. So as far as trading players away, I’m interested in hockey deals. We have a lot of draft capital. I don’t need third- and fourth- and fifth-round picks. We have a lot of those. We have to make good decisions, though, if we get offered something that is going to make us better in the future. My job is to manage today but watch out for the future, obviously.
“That’s why I spent so much time on the road the last couple of weeks. I went to a lot of different games, not just our games. It’s going to come quick here. We have the two-week break, the trade deadline is March 7, with the outdoor game in between. There’s not going to be much time. Our scouts, we had a call yesterday focused on different teams. They’ll continue to do their jobs. We’ll be ready for it. I anticipate there could be some in and out for sure.”
A similar question about the unrestricted free agents-to-be. We get this question a lot from the fans. I’m sure you’re working on a lot of stuff in regard to them, so how do you handle the fact you have players whose contracts are up at the end of the year?
“Getting mid-round picks for players and stuff like that, these players are too important for us as we go down the stretch regardless of where we’re at. They’ve helped us get this far. I think we owe it to everybody to try to keep this group together. If there’s something that blows our mind away, some kind of offer we can’t refuse, we have to look at that. But where we’re at, you look at the trade deadline. The guys that maybe you thought if you were out of it, you were going to move, they’re almost like your deadline day acquisitions because you haven’t moved them. ... We know what we have with some of these guys. If we can make this team better, that’s my job to try to do that, but I’m not looking to move guys out for mid-round picks.”
You’ve spent a lot of time with USA Hockey in your career. With the 4 Nations Face-Off this week, how great is to see best-on-best hockey happen again?
“I think it’s a great buildup to the Olympics. Unfortunately with the timing right now, you’re going to have some guys injured and stuff like that. I wish the timing could be different, but it is what it is. It’s always fun to get the best players in the league that are eligible – there's only four countries being represented – to compete against each other. I think it’s going to be a hard tournament. I think the players, when they put the sweater on – I've been fortunate to wear the U.S. sweater not only as a player but as a coach and a manager. It’s a different feeling. You’re very proud of your country and want to represent your country. I’m excited to be able to watch these games and hope they’re really good, close games. And at the end of the day, I hope the USA comes out on top. We only have one player (USA defenseman Zach Werenski), so it's easy for me to say that.”
