In the middle of the controversy, eyes inevitably turn to Columbus’s Finnish club manager Jarmo Kekäläinen, writes Tommi Seppälä, Urheilu’s NHL reporter.
Tommi Seppälä Urheilu’s NHL reporter
The NHL hockey club in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization is back again.
Jarmo Kekäläinen led by Columbus, different Dramas and Dramas have followed each other in recent years and it’s coming back again. The season, or rather the training camp, didn’t even have time to start, when the club already had to change the head coach.
Head coach named in July Mike Babcock resigned according to the club himself, but this was hardly given an option.
The saga started when a North American hockey podcast revealed that the coach had searched the players’ phones during pre-season meetings.
First of all, both the club and its two key players, the captain Boone Jenner and a Yankee star Johnny Gaudreau, denied that there was anything questionable in the cases. According to the players, the photo exchange was done in a good spirit.
However, the NHL, its players’ association and the club itself began to dig deeper. It turned out that many of the younger players were not comfortable with the way the head coach was checking their phones. According to reports, the event that broke Kamelinselkä’s back was a several-minute phone call made by the coach outside the club’s working premises.
Babcock, who had already treated both players and staff badly in Detroit and Toronto, was already on weak ice from the start. When the truth about some sort of privacy violations came out, the club and Babcock had no choice.
Babcock is one of the most successful hockey coaches in international arenas, but it is certain that he will never return to work in the NHL. The Canadian pilot is in many places the ultimate persona non grata in the NHL community, including former players.
The chase during the last few days was wild – many wanted to see the coach that drifted on the outside curve fall high and hard.
Next in the reasons is Kekäläinen
However, the dispute does not end there. Next, the eye turns to Jarmo Kekäläinen and his manager, the club president to John Davidson. Especially to Kekäläinen. There are many income angles.
In relation to the case at hand, one must ask: did the club management know about Babcock’s actions? Was there an attempt to hide the ugly truth with the first announcement? And if the club management didn’t know, how can it be that the players leak such big things to the podcast hosts rather than the club management?
Neither scenario makes the club management look particularly good.
Kekäläinen, Davidson and others who may have been involved in the recruitment process must take responsibility for the Babcock fiasco anyway. The recruitment was a huge risk from the beginning, which materialized catastrophically just a couple of weeks before the start of the season – this is a big failure on the part of the club management.
Kekäläinen failed in his head coach selection for the second time in two years. As a result, Columbus is starting the season for the second time in three years under the leadership of a coach who has not coached in the NHL as a head coach for a single day.
Assistant coach Pascal Vincent was elevated to head coach after Babcock’s departure on a two-year contract. Vincent is Kekäläinen’s third head coaching hire in three years, fourth in total.
Going around Columbus has been more or less restless for years. Players and coaches have come and gone, and many of the player deals made by the club management have not hit the mark. Of course, the club has reserved young people well, but the identity in a wider perspective is missing and the turbulence around the club is always strong.
All of this is the responsibility of Kekäläinen, who has already been offered more bait than any other hockey market would have offered – especially when taking into account the really modest results on the rink side.
At some point in the ongoing turbulence, it could also be good for the club management to raise their hand.
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