Columbus Blue Jackets trade Patrik Laine to Montreal Canadiens for Jordan Harris
The Blue Jackets have granted Patrik Laine’s wish.
The disgruntled Finnish forward was traded along with a 2026 second-round draft pick to the Montreal Canadiens on Monday for defenseman Jordan Harris, capping on a process that began June 13 with Laine’s trade request to Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell through agent Andy Scott.
"We want players that want to be Blue Jackets and Patrik made it clear that he thought a change of scenery was best for him," Waddell said in a statement. "We were able to acquire a good young player in Jordan Harris while maintaining financial flexibility in this deal, which was very important to us. We wish Patrik all the best.”
Columbus isn't absorbing any of Laine's remaining contract, which carries a hefty $8.7 million annual cap charge and pays the forward $9.1 million in actual salary the next two years.
According to PuckPedia, a salary-tracking site, the Blue Jackets now have just under $18.2 million in cap space. That's a huge saving for the Blue Jackets, who'd been asked by other teams to eat the NHL's maximum allowable retention amount of 50% of the remaining contract under the league's collective bargaining agreement with the NHL Players' Association.
“Any other deals we’d talked about were all about retaining half, and our goal was to get out of the whole contract," Waddell told the Dispatch after the news was released. "So, we’re happy it worked out. I called him and wished him the best of luck. Sometimes, you’ve got to make decisions that are better for your hockey club, and gaining cap (space) and cash means a lot for two years.”
Harris, 24, has a one-way NHL contract that will pay him $1.4 million for the upcoming season whether he's in Columbus or playing in the AHL with the Cleveland Monsters. He'd have to clear waivers to be assigned to the AHL, but the Jackets' newest defenseman still has to earn an NHL spot on a new team loaded with young blue-liners looking to do the same.
"We’ve got lots of competition there for some jobs, so it will be up to him and we’ll find out quickly about him," Waddell said. “I think young guys have to be hungry, especially somebody coming into a new organization. It’s one thing just to play in the league, but you’ve also got to add something to our team that gives us a better chance of winning hockey games.”
Harris, a left-handed shot, has added eight goals, 24 assists and 32 points in 131 NHL games with the Canadiens, who selected him in the third round (No. 71) of the 2018 draft. He finished last season with 3-11-14 in 56 games to go with 86 blocked shots and 22 penalty minutes. The bigger draw for the Blue Jackets, however, was the flexibility the trade provides Waddell against the NHL's salary cap.
Laine, 26, spent parts of four seasons with the Blue Jackets, who acquired him from the Winnipeg Jets along with Jack Roslovic on Jan. 23, 2021. The Jets received center Pierre-Luc Dubois and a 2022 third-round pick, which they used to select forward Danil Zhilkin of the Ontario Hockey League’s Guelph Storm.
More: Columbus Blue Jackets still faced with stumbling blocks in trading Patrik Laine
Since that trade, all three NHL players involved have since been traded again — including Dubois twice more and the Columbus-born Roslovic flipped to the New York Rangers at the trade deadline in March. Zhilkin is still with the Jets but has a long way to go after finishing his first professional season with just two goals, five assists and seven points in 44 games as an AHL rookie with the Manitoba Moose.
"(Montreal's) the biggest hockey market there is, and I’ve played in Canada before, obviously, and I loved every minute of it," Laine said. "So, I missed being back there, where hockey’s the No. 1 thing and people really, genuinely care about the team and the players. So, I didn’t need too much convincing. I really wanted to go to Montreal and, obviously, I know the city and how much they care about the team, how passionate the fans are. For some people, it might not be the easiest place to go, but I’ve always liked being in the spotlight on the ice. ... So, I’m going into the challenge with open arms.”
Laine logged 174 games over parts of four seasons for the Blue Jackets, tallying 64 goals, 74 assists, 138 points and a -58 plus/minus rating while playing mostly on the top forward line and first power play unit. After averaging nearly a point-a-game during his first two seasons in Columbus, Laine never reached top form last season. An early experiment to see if he could center the first line failed, and he finished with just 6-3-9 in 18 games while dealing with two injuries (concussion, fractured clavicle) that preceded his entry into the NHL/NHL Players' Association assistance program in January.
Laine, the second overall pick of the 2016 NHL draft, also missed a game as a healthy scratch for the first time in his career.
Columbus Blue Jackets avoid salary retention in Patrik Laine trade
One of Waddell’s priorities in trading Laine was finding the best return package that didn't require the Blue Jackets to eat 50% of Laine’s remaining salary on the final two years of his contract. That percentage would've worked out to a whopping $4.35 million in cap space and $4.55 million in salary for the final two seasons of the deal. That was too much for Waddell to stomach, which is why a trade didn’t materialize sooner.
Instead, the Blue Jackets won't retain a penny of Laine's deal. That limited the return package, but Harris is still a young defenseman with potential and the large cap savings can now be utilized as a valuable asset. Not long after the deal was announced, Waddell received inquiries from two GMs looking to possibly send the Blue Jackets a trade offer to ease their own cap issues.
"There are a lot of teams that are either over the cap or right up against it, and if nothing happens right now, we’ll just go into training camp," Waddell said. "We just gave ourselves so much more flexibility. Even if it doesn’t work out this year, going into next summer knowing that you don’t have that on your books is a relief. There was already a question of whether we were going to be able to move him or not this summer, so now it’s behind us.”
Patrik Laine battled multiple injuries, absences with Columbus Blue Jackets
The biggest reason Laine is no longer a Blue Jackets forward was his inability to stay in the lineup.
Prior to his arrival in 2021, he dealt with an undisclosed upper-body injury in Winnipeg that delayed his Columbus debut by about three weeks and that was just the start of a four-year stretch littered with health problems. The following season (2021-22), Laine missed two months with an oblique strain that coincided with the unexpected death of his father in Finland, and then a back issue forced him out of the lineup in April of that season.
Laine signed his four-year contract extension the following offseason, after the Blue Jackets stunned the NHL by signing Johnny Gaudreau, but their on-ice chemistry was stunted by two more Laine injuries early the next season. The first was a sprained elbow that occured in the second period of the season-opener in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the second was a high-ankle sprain that followed his return.
Laine also missed time with a Covid-19 infection before missing the final month with a strained triceps muscle. Last season, Laine sustained a concussion from an elbow to his head delivered by Calgary Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson on Oct. 20 in Columbus, and his return from that was stopped in early December by a fractured collarbone that occured in Toronto, when he was tripped and crashed into the end boards.
While recovering from that one, Laine left the Jackets' road trip in late January while they were in Calgary, entering into the NHL/NHLPA player assistance program for undisclosed reasons. He missed the remainder of the season and stayed in the program until late July.
In all, Laine missed 123 of 297 games the Blue Jackets played following the trade that brought him to Columbus. That's a 41.4% absence rate stemming from 10 separate issues, which largely explains why the Blue Jackets agreed with Laine’s request this summer for a new NHL home.
“It’s been kind of a rollercoaster,” he said of his time in Columbus. “Obviously, it didn’t work out the way that anybody was hoping, obviously for me personally or for the team. ... But for me, I learned so many valuable lessons, mostly off the ice, about myself as a person, that I can take with me for the rest of my life. I’m still going to cherish my time in Columbus.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Blue Jackets grant Patrik Laine's requested trade
