"Blue Jackets captain Rick Nash walked into the locker room yesterday and saw three empty stalls to the right of his locker, the nameplates above each removed.

Fredrik Modin, gone.

Raffi Torres, gone.

Milan Jurcina, gone.

"Kind of lonely over there," Nash said.

A week ago, he played for a Canadian Olympic hockey team worth its weight in gold. Yesterday, he dealt with the realities of another Blue Jackets' retooling project. The only Torres in the room was a bantamweight cage fighter named Miguel doing a meet and greet with players in advance of his Saturday fight in Nationwide Arena.

A day after the Blue Jackets moved three veterans at the NHL trade deadline for draft picks, prospects and a journeyman defenseman, Nash spoke of the void while trying to focus on the future.

"You lose friends when the business side takes over," Nash said. "It was tough to lose (Modin) because he has helped me with a lot of things with leadership and Raffi was a good friend and a big part of the team. But you got to look at the long haul and the future with those moves."

When Nash signed an eight-year, $62.4million contract last July, he had hoped days like Wednesday were behind the franchise. Instead, the Blue Jackets sit in 14th place in the Western Conference with a depleted lineup and road games in San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim on deck."