Renaud P Lavoie of RDS reports that Columbus center Derick Brassard will be out of the lineup tonight when the Blue Jackets face the Montreal Canadiens. This is an interesting development for a number of reasons:
-- Brassard has been a healthy scratch seven times already this season.
-- Fed up with BJs head coach Scott Arniel making him a healthy scratch, Brassard’s agent, Allan Walsh, took to Twitter to air his grievances on Dec. 1:
While I have tremendous respect for Scott Howson and the rest of Columbus’ management team, the situation regarding Derick Brassard has become untenable.
This coach has a history of burying players and using them as scapegoats to mask his own lack of success on the ice. Derick has been singled out, almost from the very beginning of the season to be the fall guy in case things don’t go well.
The Columbus organization cares about Derick and has been good to him, but at some point enough is enough.
-- The following night, Brassard was back in the lineup against Edmonton. He was one of Columbus’ best players in a 6-3 loss, playing 16:42 (his most in over a month) with a plus-1 rating and four shots on goal.
-- Brassard is a Quebec kid. He was born and raised in Hull and played his junior hockey for Drummondville. His father, Pierre, was drafted in 1976 by the Montreal Canadiens.
-- Brassard has been the subject of recent trade rumors.
Logic suggests one of three things: 1) The BJs are holding Brassard out of the lineup because a trade’s in the works. 2) Arniel is firing back at Walsh by sitting his client in what amounts to a homecoming game. 3) Arniel and Walsh are setting things up for a barn fight, the preferred method of conflict resolution for hockey people (and gypsies).