Texier looking forward to his return to the NHL, Blue Jackets

What's old is new again for Alexandre Texier.
After about 15 months away from the Blue Jackets, the 23-year-old forward has returned this week to a new-look locker room area, plenty of new teammates and a team looking for a new head coach.

At the same time, a lot of the faces are familiar, leading to plenty of smiles for Texier upon his return. After spending last season playing overseas in order to be closer to home, Texier is back in the capital city and the NHL, with Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen announcing yesterday that the forward from Grenoble, France, will rejoin the club for the 2023-24 season.
After that time away, Texier is excited to be in Columbus and looking forward to the upcoming campaign.
"It's great to see some familiar faces from the years," he said. "The locker room has changed a little bit, but it's great fun (to be back)."
The Blue Jackets will be equally excited given what Texier can bring to the team. The team's second-round pick in the 2017 draft, he has totaled 22-27-49 in 123 NHL games, but he was rounding into becoming an impact player during the 2021-22 season.
Texier posted an 11-9-20 line in 36 games during that campaign and was often described by then-head coach Brad Larsen as the team's best forward during a stretch of nine goals and nine assists over 22 games, something that helped prove to the young forward he can excel at the highest level.

"I was playing with a lot of confidence last year and have some good memories in Columbus when I was playing some good hockey," he said today. "I'll just try to bring that and remember what I did back then to bring it for the training camp."
Texier has not played NHL hockey since he suffered a finger injury in late January 2022. At the time, he returned home and then was granted a leave of absence by the Blue Jackets for the remainder of the campaign because of personal issues, including the loss of "people very close to him," as Kekalainen said at the time.
That extended into last season, as the Blue Jackets, NHL, NHLPA and Texier worked out a deal where he was able to play in Europe with the ZSC Lions of Switzerland's National League. Playing on a squad that featured former Blue Jackets Dean Kukan and Mikko Lehtonen as well as former NHLers Lucas Wallmark, Juho Lammikko, Sven Andrighetto and Yannick Weber, Texier was third on the team with a 13-22-35 line in 46 games.
He leaves Switzerland with some good memories as well as an acknowledgment of how both ZSC and the Blue Jackets helped him get through a tough time.
"I'm just glad that the Blue Jackets and Zurich helped me to go through that, and now my goal is to get ready for September," Texier said, also pointing out he would hear from CBJ teammates as last season went along. "(The Blue Jackets) were great. I have nothing bad to say. They just helped me, and they came all the way during the season to watch me. It means a lot that they were following me. Now everything is done and I have to play some hockey."

Texier adds a versatile piece to the puzzle for the Blue Jackets, someone who can play up and down the lineup and also slot in on the power play and the penalty kill. He's played both special teams in his CBJ career and had carved out a full-time spot on the PK in 2021-22 thanks to his intelligence, skating ability and counterattack skills.
He says he's fully healthy at the moment and ready to go after a couple of nagging injuries, and part of his time in Columbus is being spent laying out a training plan for the upcoming months. That will include a stint in May playing on his France's squad at the IIHF World Championships, something he sees as a springboard to being ready next season.
In the meantime, he said he's keeping up with the NHL game and fully expects to be able to pick it back up when camp starts in September.
"You watch from the outside, you watch some games, you watch some playoff games right now, you know what to expect," Texier said. "I want more, and I know I have a lot of work to do and a lot of improvement to go, but I'm really excited."