I hate it when this happens. Please pass the Kool-Aid.

Lukas Sedlak makes the team.

Grrr.  No matter how much I tried to temper my expectations last year, I still got burned.  And it left a mark.  Problematically, after the CBJ's season was over, I got a couple of opportunities to attend Lake Erie (then; Cleveland now) Monsters playoff games.  I can remember being surprised and pleased by how solid the young players were, no matter which side of the puck they were playing on.

And now this.  Two posts ago I was agitating for keeping an aging 4th liner instead of Sedlak, who is a young man with a bad habit of going to the net with his stick on the ice.  He also works very hard, and was instrumental in Lake Erie's playoff run.  Now he has now pushed Gregory Campbell to waivers.  Cleveland is an awesome place to play, and a guy like Campbell has a role in the organization.  It will be a difficult journey for him to accept that fate, and perhaps someone will pick him up.

Now we have a core group of Lake Erie Monsters joined with a core group of CBJ veterans, and all of a sudden this is a team with some collective speed.  I think it is still an open argument whether Artem Anismov in Chicago is better than Saad in Columbus, but I think the CBJ got faster in the trade (and I always liked Arty).  Sedlak, Bjorkstrand, Anderson and Werenski bring a shot of speed up from the AH, and the CBJ appear to have the potential to skate with some of the faster teams.  That should be interesting.

We have a lot of young players that have pushed hard to make the team.  It changes the dynamic on the team, and it makes it hard to retain my cynical shell.  Sigh.  Okay Jarmo, pass the Kool-Aid.  I'm in.....

GO JACKETS!!
GO MONSTERS!!