Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Blue Jackets tweak front office, prompt Blues to do the same

IHOCKEY-FIN-NHL

Finnish retired professional ice hockey player Jarmo Kekalainen attends a news conference on February 13, 2013 in Helsinki, Finland. Jarmo Kekalainen is going to be the first European to manage a National Hockey League . AFP PHOTO/ LEHTIKUVA / Kimmo Mantyla ///FINLAND OUT (Photo credit should read KIMMO MANTYLA/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty Images

When an executive goes from one NHL team to another, players often come with him.

That might eventually become the case for former St. Louis Blues executive and current Columbus Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen, but he’s starting with the front office first.

Kekalainen named Ville Siren the Blue Jackets’ head amateur scout and Josef Boumedienne as a European scout on Monday. Siren spent nine years with the Blues. In reaction to Siren’s departure, the Blues promoted Jan Vopat to Siren’s vacated position: Head of European Amateur Scouting.

One cannot help but wonder if the Blue Jackets will eventually start poaching players from St. Louis, although Columbus is actually surprising close to the cap ceiling with only about $2.7 million in breathing room, according to Cap Geek.

So, something more exciting like nabbing a former Blues player via free agency or making a landmark trade will need to wait.