The Columbus Blue Jackets have 52 days until opening night at Nationwide Arena. Today we look at the history of jersey #52. Almost every player on this list has a bad reputation of some sort.
Let's take a look.
Adam Foote - 2006-08 - Foote was the first player to wear #52 for the Blue Jackets in their history. In August of 2005, Adam Foote signed a 3-year contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets. At the time, it seemed like a wonderful thing. A long-time star chose to sign with a young expansion team, and things were looking up. He would be joining a team with guys like Rick Nash, Sergei Federov, Todd Marchant, and Geoff Sanderson. After just a few months, Foote was given the C after Luke Richardson stepped down as the captain.
In his first season with Columbus, he would play in 65 games. He scored six goals and had 22 points, which was good enough for third among defensemen on the team. The 2006-07 season saw him play 59 games. Foote only scored three goals and had 12 points. His first two seasons in Columbus weren’t going too well. In the third and final year of his contract, he would play in 63 games for the CBJ, scoring one goal and totaling 15 points. He was actually on pace to have his best year in a CBJ uniform.
On February 26th of 2008, Adam Foote was traded to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a pair of draft picks. The rumor was that Columbus was trying to re-sign Foote, but Foote was pricing himself out of Columbus. The rumors back then were that Foote, and his agent set their contract demands so high because they knew Columbus wouldn’t accept them, essentially forcing his way out of Columbus.
He ended his tenure with Columbus by playing in 187 games and totaling 49 points. He would play until 2011, and then he decided to retire. He is currently the newly named head coach of the Vancouver Canucks.
Craig Rivet - 2011 - Originally drafted by Montreal in 1992, where he played the first 12 years of his career, he came to the Jackets at the end of his career in 2004. Rivet, who was the captain of the Buffalo Sabres at the time, was waived by Buffalo on February 23, 2011. On February 26, 2011, Rivet was claimed on re-entry waivers by the Jackets, where he played in 14 games and totaled 1 point. After announcing his retirement, in October of 2011 he signed with the ECHL's Elmira Jackals. It was later discovered that he signed the contract to obtain his United States permanent residency.
Kerby Rychel - 2015 - Rychel was drafted by Columbus in the first round of the 2013 draft and is the son of former NHL enforcer Warren Rychel. Unfortunately, the book on Kerby Rychel is really short. After playing just 37 games over two seasons, Rychel was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for defenseman Scott Harrington. Rychel would go on to play only 6 more NHL games in his career.
He spent two seasons playing for Columbus' AHL affiliate Springfield Falcons, and Lake Erie Monsters. He would help the Monsters win the 2016 Calder Cup by totaling 27 points in 37 games.
In 2019, he would leave for Swedish club Örebro HK of the Swedish Hockey League. He would quickly terminate that contract when KHL club HC Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk offered him a deal on September 3, 2019. The team would terminate his contract after only seven games when he failed to score a single point.
Rychel is officially retired.
Emil Bemström - 2020-24 - The Blue Jackets drafted Emil Bemström in 2017, #117 overall. Although he wasn’t a high draft pick, many draft experts thought the CBJ had found a decent player—a shifty skater who would score with a very good shot.
Bemström made his NHL debut during the 19-20 season. He would play in 56 games that season, scoring 10 goals and 20 points. Additionally, he played five playoff games in the bubble in 2020 but would fail to score a point.
During the shortened 2021 season, Bemström played 20 games in the NHL, but he also played for HIFK in Liiga. He would only score three goals and total five points for the Jackets. For HIFK however, he had 17 points in 16 games. During a game in May of 2021, Bemström would net a natural hat-trick against the Nashville Predators, his first NHL goal since March 2020.
The 2021-22 season Bemström would only play 41 games for the Jackets. He scored six goals and had 11 points. He would also play four games for Cleveland of the AHL scoring two goals.
In the 2022-23 season, Bemström would see his time split between Columbus and Cleveland. In Cleveland, he would play in 21 total games, scoring 14 goals and totaling 31 points. He seemed to be able to score and assist at will. In Columbus however, it was a different story. He played in 55 games, scoring seven goals for 22 points, and would average 12 minutes a game on ice.
Fans have a love/hate relationship with Emil Bemström. Most people think of him as a top prospect with unlimited potential, but what they need to realize is that he was a 4th round pick. Although a lot of scouts and draft experts didn’t think Bemström would even play in the NHL, he has shown that he can at least score a few goals.
But on April 13th, 2023, against the Pittsburgh Penguins, that love/hate relationship came to a head. Through no fault of his own and simply doing what he is being paid to do, he scored a power-play goal. The Penguins were winning the game at the point 2-1, with a little over three minutes left to play. Johnny Gaudreau would go on to win the game for the Jackets in OT. This win sealed the Jackets' fate in that they would not secure the worst record in the NHL, thus losing out on the chance to draft #1 overall. A large portion of CBJ fans turned on Bemström for this, unfairly. He seemed to have been forgiven after the Blue Jackets were able to secure Adam Fantilli.
Bemström's time in North America has come to an end after it's been reported that he will be signing with SC Bern of the Swiss National League.
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