{"id":17262,"date":"2025-06-26T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17262\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T21:00:09","slug":"blue-jackets-acquire-brendan-gaunce-from-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/17262\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jackets Acquire Brendan Gaunce From Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Blue Jackets have acquired center <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/g\/gauncbr01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-06-26_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Brendan Gaunce<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>from the Wild in exchange for right-winger\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/b\/butleca01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-06-26_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Cameron Butler<\/a><\/strong>, the team <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/bluejackets\/news\/blue-jackets-acquire-forward-brendan-gaunce-minnesota-cameron-butler?utm_source=social&amp;utm_medium=tw&amp;utm_campaign=release&amp;utm_content=trade\" rel=\"noopener\">announced<\/a> Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Gaunce, 31, begins his second stint in Columbus after spending one season in Minnesota. The Wild signed him to a two-year, two-way deal on the opening day of free agency last year after spending three seasons in the Blue Jackets organization, primarily with AHL Cleveland. He only made 12 NHL appearances, posting one point and a minus-four rating while averaging 9:42 of ice time per game.<\/p>\n<p>He spent the bulk of the season down with AHL Iowa when he wasn\u2019t in the Twin Cities as an injury call-up. There, he posted a 15-14\u201329 scoring line in 39 games while posting a -16 rating and serving as an alternate captain. That was one of the better stat lines on a weak Iowa club this year, and his 0.74 points per game was higher than his career average of 0.69 over 382 minor-league games over the course of his lengthy professional career.<\/p>\n<p>As for Butler, the 23-year-old gets a fresh start after a rocky beginning to his professional career. Columbus signed him as an undrafted free agent following a 55-point season with the OHL\u2019s Oshawa Generals in 2022-23. He\u2019s struggled to even hold down a regular AHL role in Cleveland, though, posting just 11 points in 91 games over the last three years. He only appeared in 37 out of 72 possible games last season and was looking like a strong non-tender candidate when his entry-level contract expires following the 2025-26 campaign. He\u2019ll now look for more ice time in Iowa as the 6\u20194\u2033, 209-lb power winger looks to get his development back on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jackets have acquired center Brendan Gaunce\u00a0from the Wild in exchange for right-winger\u00a0Cameron Butler, the team announced&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[16749,16750,3110,3112,293,62,1650,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-17262","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-brendan-gaunce","9":"tag-cameron-butler","10":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-transactions","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114751682939143577","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}