Don Waddell has watched what an offer sheet can do to a general manager who isn’t ready for one, and he is telling anyone who asks that Columbus won’t be that team. Speaking to TSN1050’s First Up, the Blue Jackets GM said he is in regular contact with Adam Fantilli’s camp and expects to get a deal done.
“The good thing with Fantilli is that I talk to his agent all the time and we’re in a good-faith negotiation,” Waddell said. “I think communication between the player and the team, and the agent and the team is so important. You can’t break off those discussions. You may not always agree with what’s coming back your way, but as long as you’re talking, you feel confident that you’ll get a deal done.”
The context is unavoidable. Leo Carlsson — taken one pick ahead of Fantilli in 2023 — signed a five-year, $90 million offer sheet from the Flyers that Anaheim matched, and by all accounts the Ducks were blindsided by the number. Fantilli, 21, has 140 career points to Carlsson’s 141. He is coming off a three-year entry-level deal worth $2.85 million total. The market just told him what he’s worth, and it starts with a two-digit figure.
Waddell’s actual defense isn’t the relationship — it’s the balance sheet. Columbus has kept better than $23 million in cap space open, enough to match any sheet a rival submits. But he was careful not to oversell it, because that money is already spoken for in pieces.
“You say we have $25 million in cap space but with Fantilli and the two arbitration cases, that money can go very quickly,” Waddell said. “You never want to put yourself in position where you don’t have enough cap space if you ever did get an offer sheet.”
Those two arbitration cases are Jet Greaves and Cole Sillinger, and they land before Fantilli does. Whether Columbus ends up bridging Fantilli in the single digits or committing long-term at a number that changes the franchise’s cap structure, the order of operations matters: Waddell has to know what the goalie and the center cost before he learns what his best young player will accept.
