Patrik Laine Looks Like He's Furious He Has To Play The Rest Of The Year For Torts, And Now He's Taking It Out On The Rest Of The League
The NHL Trade Deadline came and went yesterday. Over the weekend the Columbus Blue Jackets sent defenseman David Savard to the Tampa Bay Lightning for a 1st round pick in the upcoming draft. Then on Sunday they followed that up by sending their captain Nick Foligno to the Toronto Maple Leafs for another 1st round pick in the upcoming draft. Riley Nash was also sent from Columbus to Toronto for a conditional 7th round pick in 2022. So Jarmo Kekalainen did a pretty solid job at realizing his team is dead this year, but loading up with assets for the 2021 Draft.
One player who didn't end up on the move, however, was Patrik Laine. He becomes a restricted free agent on July 1st but for now he's stuck playing for a team that was clearly a seller at the deadline, and he still has to deal with Torts for at least the rest of the season. He wanted so badly to get out of a shit situation in Winnipeg and now he's covered head to toe in shit in Columbus. I wouldn't be surprised if Patrik Laine tried to hack into Jarmo's phone yesterday to try to trade himself before the 3pm deadline. Buddy hates the shit out of Torts and Torts hates the shit out of him. He has to be furious that he's stuck playing for that maniac and unfortunately for the Central Division, they have to feel the wrath for these final 12 games.
You can feel the amount of pent up frustration that is exuding out of Laine in every stride right there during that trip from coast to coast. The Blue Jackets are lucky there are boards surrounding the ice there because if there was an opening available, I think he would have just skated out of that city forever. And that's even after it looked like he pretended the puck was Torts' face earlier in the game on this bomb from the point.
Again, just so much pent up frustration there. And to make matters even worse, the Blue Jackets lost in overtime.
But yeah. Patrik Laine has 12 more games left on the season (probably only 3 more wins all coming against Detroit). With how furious he must be to be stuck in Columbus right now, those are going to be 12 really bad nights to be the back of the net while he's out on the ice. Unless, of course, he forgets to backcheck during one shift and then gets stapled to the bench for the rest of the season.