{"id":203221,"date":"2025-09-21T20:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T20:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/203221\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T20:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T20:31:13","slug":"blue-jackets-chris-clark-talks-three-up-coming-prospects-the-hockey-writers-columbus-blue-jackets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/203221\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jackets’ Chris Clark Talks Three Up & Coming Prospects – The Hockey Writers – Columbus Blue Jackets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Columbus Blue Jackets<\/a> will open their 2025-26 preseason on Sunday evening with a game at home against the St. Louis Blues. It marks their first of four games played on consecutive days.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jackets have completed the first three days of training camp accomplishing what they\u2019ve wanted to. They focused on defense on Day 1. They addressed the neutral zone on Day 2. Then with fans in the stands, they worked on their offense and power play on Day 3.<\/p>\n

Now we get to see the progress of certain prospects. Blue Jackets\u2019 Director of Player Personnel and Cleveland Monsters GM Chris Clark<\/a> stopped by and spoke to the Hockey Writers this week at camp to discuss three prospects that should eventually make an impact on the NHL club.<\/p>\n

All three most likely will start the season with the Monsters. Each should have prominent roles there as they continue on their development path.<\/p>\n

Clark discussed prospects Luca Del Bel Belluz, Corson Ceulemans and Jordan Dumais. In Del Bel Belluz\u2019s case, he got a taste of the NHL in 2024-25 and made an impression in limited time. He will be expected to take on a big work load on the Monsters\u2019 top line at center.<\/p>\n

Here is what Clark had to say about these three important prospects.<\/p>\n

Luca Del Bel Belluz<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s really made some improvement over the first couple of years here. A lot of it with him, he\u2019s got a great mind, puck skills, all those things. He was getting stronger. And that wasn\u2019t something that was going to happen tomorrow. It was going to happen over time, over a few summers. And he\u2019s bigger each year. He\u2019s not significantly, but some guys just put it on the way they can put it on. So he\u2019s going to get stronger as he gets older and it\u2019s just going to take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LucaLuca Del Bel Belluz is getting stronger with each passing season. (Photo by Ben Jackson\/NHLI via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the one thing you really need because it\u2019s one thing to play a few games in the NHL and do well, but it\u2019s another thing to play 82 games in the NHL and do well. So you need that body armor. You need to be able to protect yourself. He does a great job of it because he\u2019s very elusive, but I think that\u2019s just his path. It\u2019s going to happen. He\u2019s going to be an NHL player. It\u2019s just (about) the right time for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corson Ceulemans<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we saw him in Buffalo last year, there were things we were concerned a bit, holding onto pucks too long, trying to do too many things, turn the puck over. But we sat with him after Buffalo, sat with him after he got sent to Cleveland and we said, if you\u2019re gonna make it, you got to do these little things. And from Buffalo to the time he got hurt, I think it was in January, he might have been our best D down there. He made that much progress. He blew it out of the water in our expectations. So it was too bad that he didn\u2019t get to play the second half of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re actually really interested in how (he does here.) He\u2019s fully healthy. He\u2019s come back, no problems, and he looks great. He looks bigger. He looks stronger. So we\u2019re really excited to see what he can do here in camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan Dumais<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got his first pro season under his belt so that learning curve is gone. He knows what to expect. We just want to see improvement. That\u2019s all we want from our young guys is make sure they\u2019re getting better each year because there\u2019s no set date. We want them to make it at this point. It might be some guys hit it in a year or two, and some guys takes a little bit longer. Whatever their development path, the path is what it is. But we expect him to be more of an offensive factor with us. He\u2019s not a veteran yet, but he knows the expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Columbus Blue Jackets will open their 2025-26 preseason on Sunday evening with a game at home against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,28874,897,230,5179,34289,5,33042,1978,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-203221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-chris-clark","11":"tag-columbus","12":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","13":"tag-columbusbluejackets","14":"tag-corson-ceulemans","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-jordan-dumais","17":"tag-luca-del-bel-belluz","18":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115244189849813080","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}