Thursday evening’s news did not come as a surprise. When the NHL club Columbus would release the boss of the sports side Jarmo Kekäläinen task, seemed to be only a matter of time. A star match break at the end of January seemed like a potential possibility before, but when no solutions were heard, it was assumed that the decisions had been moved to the summer.
It turned out otherwise.
Kekeläinen’s eleven-year time with the club came to an end early Thursday morning local time.
In the end, there were no options left for the owner ladder. The third longest-tenured GM in the entire NHL, Kekäläinen, did a lot of good things in the club during his eleven years, but the last few seasons have been a time of merciless turbulence. Columbus has sailed from crisis to crisis for several years, both on and off the ice. Perhaps the most worrying thing has been the lack of a clear direction and vision – at least there hasn’t been such a thing to be found externally or in the club management’s messages.
On the one hand, Columbus was a rebuilding team, on the other hand, it was aiming for the playoffs in the club management’s speeches. In terms of sports, the club has been in the wind for years, and among the six weakest for the three previous years. Kekeläinen was responsible for this.
The problem was that the Finnish boss seemed to be constantly digging the created hole deeper and deeper.
This was seen, among other things, in the head coach selections. To the surprise of many, Kekeläinen hired an inexperienced as head coach in the summer of 2022 by Brad Larsen, under whom there was no heavenly thought in the team’s playing. The team’s season ended already in November at the NHL event in Tampere.
Next, Kekääinen hired a player from Toronto who got booted due to questionable coaching methods Mike Babcock’s. Even though Kekäääinen and his superiors assured that Babcock had changed, this had not changed. The Canadian pilot got the boot in the fall of 2023, before he had time to start a single practice session, because he had violated the privacy protection by examining the player’s phone. In the end, that fiasco sealed Kekelääinen’s fate in the company.
The fire was extinguished by hiring a new yellow-beak pilot, an assistant coach, at the helm Pascal Vincent. When one fire was extinguished, or at least subdued, somewhere else was already smoldering. This was a recurring theme for several years.
From Kekeläinen’s last years in the club, the image remained that the players were not happy to be in the club.
During this season, almost half a dozen players have for one reason or another felt dissatisfied and wanted to leave the club. If the timeline is stretched back five years, for example, the amount rises even higher. The culture was certainly wanted to be built through a tough level of requirements, but perhaps the belt was pulled too tight. It can’t be just a coincidence that players from the same club are showing symptoms in public all the time. And now we remember that in the NHL world, noises are usually kept under wraps until the very end.
Kekeläinen didn’t seem to be able to build a culture in the club where the players would feel good. Through various reports, a picture of a working community has been created, where, under the leadership of Kekä¤läinen, formerly Tortorella and now Vincet, the top down is and still is, constantly being led by highly tuned lines . When all of this is combined with the erratic and questionable player development like the current season, a negative atmosphere and cycle has arisen as if by itself.
And Kekäläinen didn’t succeed in the changes he made to the players in recent years either. For example, he got rid of two aging social icons: From Cam Atkinson and From Nick Foligno. About players for whom the city and the club really meant something.
It was brought in with a lot of money Johnny Gaudreau and Patrik Laine mercenaries like The acquisition of both can be considered an almost catastrophic solution.
This is how the culture was eroded, key players and personalities were taken from the dressing room.
In the end, it’s still always about the results. Against the state of turbulence that has always prevailed in the club, it is with good reason to consider Kekäääinen to have really had much more time than he would have had with the same performances in other clubs. Columbus won only one playoff series in the Kekäääinen era, and that was four years ago. After that, the club has always belonged to the bottom of the league, both in terms of results and the game.
Much good
Still, Jarmo Kekäläinen’s career at the club can’t be painted completely black. It is clear that he did a lot of good things.
He immediately hired a Finn as his head coach by John Tortorella, under whose leadership the operation of the ice level and the culture of daily operations were put in order. Under Tortorella, Columbus built the second-longest winning streak in NHL history, as well as defeated Tampa Bay, the future double champion, in the playoffs with a 4-0 victory in a historic display in the regular season.
During Tortorella’s years, Columbus became a truly believable NHL team.
Kääläinen will be remembered from Tortorella’s years and spring 2020. Instead of selling away those who wanted by Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky, Tampere-born ice hockey boss hit the middle to increase contributions and strengthen the team. When Tampa fell in the spring, Kekääinen’s GM stock in the NHL community was higher than ever. Courage in a tough place was really appreciated.
Kekeläinen was also successful in player deals in the first years. Especially the trade of Artemi Panarin from Chicago To Brandon Saad, to Anton Forsberg as well as the back-round reserve shift, was a masterpiece of GM work.
During the Kekääläinen era, the organization’s player monitoring department was also tuned to such a condition that the club always booked quite well. Columbus found several NHL players during Kekäälinen’s years, even in the last rounds.
And Kekelääinen, in the name of honesty, does not follow Jätä in a much worse mess, where it was when the Finn was hired in the winter of 2013. It is important to understand that there was nothing going on in the club At that time, nothing. Even though right now the sporting results are declining and there is undoubtedly some kind of atmosphere problem within the club, the players are actually making good progress. The club has one of the NHL’s best rosters of young players, and Jarmo Kekäläinen also has credit for that.
With the help of a new generation of players, Columbus has everything it needs to get out of the swamp. First, however, the pipe must be cleared of rotten apples and the culture must be built to be more player-oriented. Kekeläinen was no longer the right man for that operation.
Jarmo Kekä¤inen spent a long day in Columbus and was about to open the door to Europe. Unfortunately, the last few years did not leave a particularly good taste in my mouth, but I believe that the threshold for hiring Europeans for club management work has also been lowered. Even that work has its own value.