I know, a groaner. And who hasn’t used that title yet? I’m such a hack.

But no sooner do I put up my defense of Adam Foote, or more to the point, my disappointment in the MSM reporting that has followed Foote out of Columbus, than Bob McKenzie comes riding in on his white stallion to save the day. From his blog at TSN:

It was with great interest, and perhaps a great deal of incredulity, that I read the Columbus newspaper accounts on the weekend that implied departed Blue Jacket captain Adam Foote was something of a fraud and that he deviously orchestrated his exit from Columbus to Colorado by poor faith negotiating and threats of being a ”bad teammate.”

Interesting.

I would imagine most who have played alongside Foote in his illustrious NHL career would be hard-pressed to come up with ”fraud” as a statement of his leadership qualities. Precisely the opposite, I would think.

So basically, Bob McKenzie, a true hockey insider, doesn’t care for the published reports. Here’s some more:

If I’m looking at this one objectively, it has all the earmarks of someone spinning the loss of the captain for the sake of $600,000 a year. I can’t imagine it would be Columbus’ general manager Scott Howson. For one thing, it’s not his style. For another, no GM is going to pull that kind of stunt with his local media because it’s hardly how an organization on the rise would go about attracting free agents to play in your town this summer.

While I have no issue per se with the Blue Jackets deciding to go in a different direction than a two-year extension for Foote, I can’t imagine it’s advisable to obliquely smear a stalwart NHL defender with a reputation for character and competitiveness on his way out of town.

So I can’t imagine anyone in the Blue Jacket front office would do that, but someone somewhere is feeding the local Columbus media this stuff about Foote being a ”fraud” or threatening to be a ”bad teammate” or a ”bad captain.”

Thank you, Bob. My favorite part is the “someone, somewhere.” At this point, it’s most likely in the better (if not best) interest for the Blue Jackets to step forward and say whether or not this actually happened, or for the paper to name their sources, and if they can’t do that, retract the statements. Most likely, though, since this is a home town paper, it will just die quietly. Who in Columbus is going to hold the reporter accountable? A city scorned, an article making them feel justified. And the MSM says bloggers aren’t accountable. Whatever.

This part is really interesting, to me, at least.

In fact, in their final conversation just before the trade to Colorado was made, Foote was asked again. He said, yes, you put the contract on the table for $4 million a year and I will sign it, right here, right now.

Simply, if the Blue Jackets had offered the $4 million times two, Foote would still be in Columbus right now. The Blue Jackets knew that. Foote knew that. That is the gospel.

But they didn’t offer it. They wanted Foote to remain in Columbus without the extension, to ”talk about” it later. Foote, as no nonsense a guy as they come, said either the Jackets want him at $4 million a year on a two year deal or they don’t and nothing was going to happen in the ensuing weeks or months to change that.

Foote makes his final offer, says this is exactly what it will take for me to stay, and the Blue Jackets want to “talk about it?” They want to dangle their feet? Moments after the Foote deal was announced, the Fedorov to the Capitals deal was announced. They wanted to talk about it? I have to believe that this was an easy out for a GM that inherited two contracts that he didn’t want to keep, and that Foote’s contract extension falling through was not what made the Blue Jackets sellers. They were sellers to begin with. A simple yes or no, and the speculation would have been over. This all feels like a parting of ways where fingers didn’t have to be pointed. Someone else did the pointing for them.