Something is off. The clock is moving. Camp is closing in. Adam Fantilli remains unsigned under head coach Rick Bowness.
The Columbus Blue Jackets' young center did not attend the club's annual pre-camp golf outing Tuesday, an absence that lands much louder with his contract still unresolved.
This wasn't a random summer event. It was a team gathering at owner John P. McConnell's Double Eagle Golf Club, days before the locker room reconvenes for camp.
Fantilli remains a restricted free agent, and the timing now matters more than the golf. Every day without a deal pushes the uncertainty closer to actual hockey business.
There is no confirmed refusal to attend training camp. But the first visible absence of the pre-camp window has turned a quiet negotiation into something the Blue Jackets can't completely hide.
For Bowness, missing early camp work could complicate line combinations, special-teams reps and the first read on where one of Columbus' core centers fits.
Fantilli's contract clock is now the real story
The Blue Jackets still have time to settle this. The concern is that camp creates a hard shift in optics: once teammates are skating and Fantilli isn't, the story changes fast.
A missed golf outing doesn't equal a holdout. But when an unsigned restricted free agent skips a club event this close to camp, every empty chair starts carrying more weight than it normally would.
Fantilli was the No. 3 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, so this isn't a fringe roster negotiation. Columbus is dealing with a player expected to sit near the center of its future.
That raises the temperature on general manager Don Waddell. If a deal drifts into camp, the front office starts answering daily questions about leverage, term, money and whether the gap is widening.
The player side has leverage too. Missing a team function creates no on-ice damage, yet it reminds everyone that an unsigned core player remains separated from the group while negotiations continue.
That's why Tuesday's absence matters. Not because golf predicts a camp boycott, but because it gave the contract standoff its first public image: the Blue Jackets together, Fantilli elsewhere.
If a contract lands before camp, this becomes a footnote. If it doesn't, the golf outing could look like the first warning that Columbus and one of its biggest young pieces were heading toward a real camp absence.
Should Columbus be worried Adam Fantilli could miss the start of camp?
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