Last week the Blue Jackets announced their roster for the annual Traverse City prospect tournament.

Here’s the #CBJ roster and schedule for Traverse City: pic.twitter.com/724A3FSCdo

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) August 23, 2018

The one notably absent name was Vitali Abramov. He will not be participating because of off-season wrist surgery.

#CBJ say F Vitaly Abramov, who had wrist surgery earlier this summer, will not play in the Traverse City Prospects tournament. He also missed summer development camp.

Also, this oddity: CBJ have only prospect defenseman on the TC roster. Yes, 7 of 8 blue-liners are FA invites.

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) August 23, 2018

With European leagues starting to get underway, none of those prospects are here, so players like Alexandre Texier and Kirill Marcheno will not be playing. This had a major impact on the Jackets defence for this tournament as their top defensive prospects like Vladislav Gavrikov and Tim Berni are not here. The Jackets have just one prospect on the back-end here, Ryan Collins, the rest are free agent invites.

As far as the players who are here, Maxime Fortier is someone I am really excited to see. As a CHL overage signing he didn’t get much fanfare, but he’s a really good player and has a chance to show that here. He has a ton of speed and skill and will fit right in with how the Blue Jackets want to play. This is going to be a fast team. Liam Foudy and Johnathan Davidsson will lead the way but players like Fortier, and Trey-Fix Wolansky have plenty of speed as well.

As far the free agent invites go, Billy Moskal is one to watch. He played with Foudy in London so this is a player the organization has seen a lot, and he looks like someone they are pretty high on. He was invited to development camp in the summer and is back again for this. If he continues to show chemistry with Foudy it wouldn’t be a shock to see signed to a contract or drafted as a re-entry player next summer.

You can follow me on Twitter @PaulBerthelot

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