{"id":485092,"date":"2026-02-23T05:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/485092\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T05:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T05:01:07","slug":"blue-jackets-not-planning-to-trade-for-more-pending-ufas-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/485092\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jackets Not Planning To Trade For More Pending UFAs \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this season, the Blue Jackets surprised many when they traded for pending unrestricted free agent winger Mason Marchment<\/a> and made a coaching change, bringing in Rick Bowness.\u00a0 So far, those moves have worked out rather well.\u00a0 Marchment has nine goals and four assists in 14 games since being acquired, while Columbus has won 10 of 11 with Bowness behind the bench to get back within striking distance of a playoff spot.<\/p>\n

However, don\u2019t expect the Blue Jackets to add further rentals before the March 6th trade deadline.\u00a0 In an interview with Jeff Svoboda on the team\u2019s website<\/a>, GM Don Waddell indicated that the one thing he\u2019s not looking to do is add more veteran rentals:<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you look at it, the one thing we probably won\u2019t do is go out and try to add UFAs at the deadline. You might go around the edges a little bit, but having in particular three forwards that play good roles on our team, to add another (UFA) and give up assets probably doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three forwards that Bowness speaks of are Marchment, along with centers Charlie Coyle<\/a> and Boone Jenner<\/a>.\u00a0 Bringing in another impactful piece of note with that much talent potentially set to go elsewhere in the summer would carry some risk.\u00a0 That said, Waddell spoke of being amenable to trading for an impactful piece that\u2019s signed or under club control beyond this season, so it\u2019s not as if he\u2019s not looking to add to his group.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Waddell noted that the biggest focus at the moment revolves around discussing contracts with their pending free agents.\u00a0 Not just the group of pending UFAs, either, but pending RFAs like Adam Fantilli<\/a> and Cole Sillinger<\/a> as well.\u00a0 Getting some extra certainty about their future costs would certainly help their decision-making process leading into the deadline so it stands to reason that some of those discussions will intensify over the next week or so.\u00a0 But in terms of pure rental players, the focus in Columbus is clear: they\u2019re looking to keep the ones they have and not add to that group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this season, the Blue Jackets surprised many when they traded for pending unrestricted free agent winger Mason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[392,385,99],"class_list":["post-485092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}