Karlberg surprised to go in third round

On the second day of the NHL draft, Marcus Karlberg was in the basement of his home in Sweden watching the event unfold from Dallas with his family.

Hoping to be drafted by someone, somewhere, Karlberg recalls telling his parents that they didn’t need to watch the entirety of the draft. Perhaps, he said, they should pay attention in the sixth, maybe the seventh round.

The Blue Jackets took him in the third.

“It was like a minute after I said that, ‘bam’!” he recalled Tuesday. “It was a bit of a shock. It was unreal."

Karlberg was one of the surprise selections by the Jackets — well, at least where they took him as Karlberg came into the draft unranked by NHL Central Scouting. It is unusual, although it happens, to see a player not on the list of 143 European skaters taken in the top half of a draft.

The Jackets liked what they saw in Karlberg, however, Liam Foudy, the Blue Jackets’ first-round pick in last week’s draft, runs through a drill at the team’s development camp.

and without a selection in the fourth or fifth round, took a player they wanted.

Karlberg scored 21 goals with 62 points for three teams with the Leksand program last season.

“We obviously look at the list and pay some attention, but if we go by what other people think, our job

is kind of worthless,” Blue Jackets director of European scouting Josef Boumedienne said Saturday in Dallas.

Karlberg has been at the Jackets’ summer development camp since the start, but he hasn’t taken the ice yet. His hockey equipment was stranded back home, with the airline telling Karlberg on Tuesday morning that it was scheduled to arrive in Ohio in the afternoon.

If everything gets here on time, Karlberg should be on the ice with his new teammates Wednesday at the Ice Haus.

“I want to have fun out there,” he said. “In the (3-on-3) tournament on Thursday, I want to show them my upside. They drafted me for a reason. I want to show them that they made a good choice.”

Liam Foudy showed off the speed which led the Jackets to make him their most recent first-round pick as he darted around the ice in his Blue Jackets debut Tuesday morning. Foudy didn’t practice Monday but was out there Tuesday and showed off the athletic talents that scouts raved about.

“It has been a pretty rushed couple of days, but it has been exciting,” said Foudy, who was the 18th overall pick. “It has been a good experience so far. You show up at the draft and you have no idea where you’re going from there with 31 teams. The fact that a good organization like Columbus picked me is pretty special."

Another draft pick who was delayed in getting onto the ice was sixth-round selection Tim Berni.

The Blue Jackets traded their fifthround pick in 2019 to Detroit to get an extra sixth-round selection and snare Berni.

“We knew the draft was on TV and we watched it,” said Berni, who watched with family in Switzerland. “It was really cool, a dream come true to be drafted."

Berni had a flight cancellation as well as delays en route to Columbus from Europe and spent a night in an airport before continuing.

“It took two days,” said Berni, a defenseman who will play in the Swiss league next season. “But now I am here. I’m glad to be here.”