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McQuaid already out of Blue Jackets’ lineup just one week after trade

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Get ready for a whole new way of watching hockey with Flyers and Penguins mic'd up from their Stadium Series matchup, following the conclusion of Wild-Predators on NBCSN.

The Columbus Blue Jackets pushed all their chips to the center of the table at the NHL trade deadline and went all in on this season by acquiring Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel, Keith Kinkaid, and Adam McQuaid over a three-day stretch, exhausting almost their entire allotment of draft picks for 2019.

It was such a bold approach because the team was not even a lock to make the playoffs at the time of the trades and enters the week on the outside of the playoff picture after dropping back-to-back games to the Edmonton Oilers and Winnipeg Jets over the weekend. It also puts a ton of pressure on the team to win this season because Duchene, Dzingel, Kinkaid, McQuaid, Artemi Panarin, and Sergei Bobrovsky are all unrestricted free agents after this season.

There is a real chance many -- if not all -- of them could be gone after July 1. Given what they gave up at the deadline, the headlines they made, and the uncertainty about the roster after this season missing the playoffs would be ... well ... bad.

So far, the early returns have not produced the results the Blue Jackets were looking for as they have dropped three of their first four games since the deadline.

It also looks like one of those acquisitions is going to struggle to get a regular spot in the lineup.

McQuaid was a healthy scratch in Sunday’s loss to the Jets, having been replaced by Dean Kukan, and based on coach John Tortorella’s press conference on Monday it appears the same lineup will be used on Tuesday night when the team takes on the New Jersey Devils.

That means, again, no Adam McQuaid, just one week after the team traded a prospect and two draft picks for him.

“I have to make decisions on who I think is our best six, and right now [McQuaid] isn’t that,” Tortorella said on Monday. “I don’t know what he is; I know the character of this guy, that is a big reason why we got him, he is a high character guy. Little concerned about the speed of the game with him, so we went back to the other guys. [Kukan] had some good games prior to being taken out, in fact it was probably unfair that comes out, but because we make a deal I wanted to look at [McQuaid], and I feel [Kukan] should be in right now, so we will go with those six.”

In his first three games with the team McQuaid was a minus-four in just around 40 minutes of total ice time.

Of all the players Columbus acquired prior to the deadline McQuaid was always the one that seemed to be the most unnecessary. Obviously Tortorella loves the person and presence he can provide off the ice, but his style of play just doesn’t seem to fit with the way the Blue Jackets play on the back end or with the direction the NHL is moving. But, players get injured and if you are a team that has any hope of going on an extended playoff run you are probably going to have to use at least eight or nine different defenders. Plus, the Blue Jackets probably no doubt see McQuaid as some kind of an answer to Tom Wilson should they encounter the Washington Capitals again at some point. So here we are.

As for the Blue Jackets’ other main additions, Duchene has one goal and two assists in his first six games, while Dzingel has a pair of assists in four games.

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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.