The Blues have acquired winger Alexandre Texier from the Blue Jackets and promptly signed him to a two-year deal, his agent Dan Milstein confirmed. It’s a $4.2MM deal broken down evenly into a $2.1MM salary and cap hit each season, PuckPedia reports. The teams later made the trade official, confirming a 2025 fourth-round pick is headed to Columbus in return.
Texier, 24, is coming off a triumphant return to North America after spending the 2022-23 season on personal leave, suiting up on loan to the Swiss National League to be closer to his family in France. The Blue Jackets 2017 second-rounder put up career-highs across the board, notching 12 goals, 18 assists and 30 points in 78 games. The French pivot had always been an intriguing, versatile prospect, but COVID and injuries had limited him to a previous career-high of 46 appearances in his three previous full NHL seasons.
The Blue Jackets had tried working Texier higher up in the lineup, moving him to the wing and getting him a decent chunk of time on their penalty kill. But with a higher-skilled, younger wave of prospects coming through the pipeline, he’d become expendable. They’ll need to replace the 1:46 he averaged shorthanded per game, though.
Meanwhile, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong does solid work here to pick up a solid depth-checking forward for a mid-round pick. The extension is quite reasonable, to boot. It comes in slightly lower than Evolving Hockey’s two-year, $2.33MM AAV projection.
Texier will serve as a younger, more defensively responsible replacement for some of the Blues’ mid-20s depth forwards hitting free agency this summer, namely failed reclamation projects Kasperi Kapanen and Jakub Vrána. He’ll be in contention for a third-line wing role but could also lock down a bottom-six center spot. It’s his natural position, although he didn’t play there a ton in Columbus and was abysmal in the faceoff dot, winning just 35.5% of his draws.
Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic was first on the return.