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Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen turned heads on Friday night in Buffalo when he bypassed Jesse Puljujarvi to select Pierre-Luc Dubois with his franchise’s No. 3 overall selection at the NHL entry draft.

Puljujarvi had been thought part of what was viewed as a consensus ‘Big Three’ of top prospects, which included Auston Matthews and Patrick Laine.

As had been widely expected, Matthews was taken by the Toronto Maple Leafs at No. 1, and Laine went to the Winnipeg Jets at No. 2.

There had been quite a bit of speculation that Kekalainen might deal his pick and trade down a few spots, and the general manager himself had been quite open about having received aggressive offers on that front leading into the draft.

Kekalaien was on Hockey Central @ Noon on Toronto’s Sportsnet 590 on Monday afternoon, and he was asked directly if he was ever close to pulling the trigger on a trade.

“Yeah, I actually thought we had a deal done, but then it fell apart in the last second. But we didn’t want to move anywhere where we couldn’t get Pierre-Luc Dubois,” said Kekalainen.

“It was a small trade, and small movement back that we thought we had the deal done, but it fell apart and that’s why we picked him at 3.”

Could that trade have been with the Edmonton Oilers, who occupied the No. 4 slot, and ended up having Puljujarvi fall directly into their laps for free anyway?

“The only safe pick to move back to would have been No. 4,” Kekalainen said over the weekend, via Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch. “We were on the phone all morning and before the draft started, but Dubois was our guy at three. You don’t want to risk losing him.”

Kekalainen extolled the virtues of Dubois to Hockey Central.

“I think it’s very rare that a winger can step in and play center as well as he did, read the game defensively as well as he did, being as responsible and strong in the defensive end as he was right off the bat,” noted the Blue Jackets’ GM. “Getting better and better in faceoffs. It’s not easy to do. It looked like a position that came very naturally to him. Obviously the versatility is a good thing.

“If it seems like he’s not quite ready to play center in the NHL level yet, then we’ll start him as a winger. But we see a lot of potential for him to play center for many, many years to come in the National Hockey League, and the versatility is a plus.”

Much of the pick trade speculation had revolved around Columbus wanting to get a center, a franchise need, but Kekalainen downplayed that angle when it came to deciding between one prospect or the other with his top selection.

“Not at all. We always talk about selecting the best player available, in our opinion.

“When people ask us, ‘How was your draft?’ We always say, ‘We’ll see in five years.’

“Sometimes it might take two, might take three before guys you draft are ready to make an impact on the NHL level. It’s about the career and the potential for the career is the way we rank them, and our ranking was this, and Pierre-Luc Dubois was the guy we wanted. It’s as simple as that. It had nothing to do with position.”

The fact that Dubois can play well in all three zones was clearly a factor.

Yeah, definitely,” said Kekalainen. “I keep coming back to the character and hockey sense. Those are the two qualities that we always look for in a player. Scouting is very easy when you just look at the shots, and the skating ability, and all of those things, the physical attributes of the game. But the hockey sense is the hardest part to evaluate. You need to watch the players time and time again to make sure that you evaluate that part correctly, and know the player inside out. The character takes the same, or even more amount of time, to get to know.

“Everything with Pierre-Luc Dubois checks unbelievable and great on those areas. His hockey sense is tremendous. His character is through the roof. When you talk to his coaches, and the people that have worked with him… they all rave about him, about his character, his willingness to work, his desire to get better. All of those things, so I can’t say enough about his character. We believe in character. We believe in hockey sense. And those are the things that we feel will make him the best player available at No. 3.”

Source: Sportsnet 590/ Transcript: Nichols

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Nichols’ Notes runs weekdays, linking you to stories of interest from around the NHL.

Kekalainen: ‘I actually thought we had a deal done’ with our top pick