Surprise, Surprise…Blades Solve Overage Dilemma in Crease

By Les Lazaruk

 

While it was one of four options that the Saskatoon Blades could’ve explored, the fact that trading goaltender Logan Flodell was done Wednesday in order to reduce the Bridge City Bunch’s quantity of overage players to the WHL limit of three came as a shock to most everyone who closely follows the club.

“Anything we would’ve done would’ve been shocking, I think, because we had four star players and four great kids and four fan favourites,” explained Blades’ general manager Colin Priestner Wednesday. “We were kind of in a bind. But, I feel really good about the decision we made.”

That decision saw the Blue and Gold send Flodell…their MVP from last season and an Eastern Conference second team all-star…to the division rival Swift Current Broncos. Saskatoon then acquired 19-year-old puck stopper Ryan Kubic from the Vancouver Giants for a second round pick in the 2019 WHL Bantam Draft. The Bridge City Bunch did receive a fifth round choice in 2019 and a second round selection in 2020 for Flodell.

The Wednesday moves leave the Blue and Gold with captain and defenceman Evan Fiala, plus forwards Cam Hebig and Braylon Shmyr as the team’s 20-year-old contingent to start the 2017-18 regular-season.

Ironically, the Blades will open the new campaign Friday at home against Swift Current…with Flodell in tow.

For most of the pre-season, the commonly-held belief was that Saskatoon would trade one of the forwards…Hebig or Shmyr…in order to get down to the league’s 20-year-old quota. Priestner, himself, even said that trading Flodell wasn’t an option as far back as a month ago.

But…

“Obviously, it’s a very limited market for a 20-year-old goalie,” explained Priestner. “Sending (him) within the (East) division isn’t ideal, but if there was another team in the other conference that was interested, we would’ve, obviously, looked at that.”

Flodell spent just one season with the Bridge City Bunch…he was acquired just 370 days earlier from Seattle in a straight-up deal that sent defenceman Anthony Bishop to the Thunderbirds…but the Regina product put his stamp on the Blue and Gold with his play. In 48 games in 2016-17, Flodell posted a 22-20-2 record with a 2.81 goals against-average and a .912 save percentage for a Blades team that missed the playoffs for a fourth straight season with a 29-46-7 log.

In Kubic, Saskatoon gets a goaltender who actually has played more WHL games than Flodell (109 to 100) and comes highly-regarded, as well as a year younger. The St. Andrews, Manitoba product suited up for Hockey Canada with one of the teams in the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge in 2014. He, also, set the Giants’ single-season saves record last season with 1,681…plus recorded three consecutive shutouts, another Vancouver franchise record, between November 28 and December 4, 2015.

“It was a bit of a surprise for me,” said Kubic about being traded from the Giants to the Blades. “I kind of had a feeling I was going to get traded…but just not really sure where or when. It happened really fast (Tuesday) night…got me on a plane and flew me over here. (It’s) a little bit overwhelming, but I’m excited to be here.”

The Bridge City Bunch are excited to have him as well as Kubic solidifies an area that might have been a problem in the future.

“Nolan Maier is the goalie of the future for us,” explained Colin Priestner. “I think people know that. But, coming in as a 17-year-old rookie (next season), and expecting him to be a starting goalie and play 55 games wasn’t a good plan for us…and not fair to Nolan.”

“So now we have a succession plan where we, obviously, had to spot a 98 (born) for a guy who can play two years and play as a 20 next year. So, Kubic is going to be that guy.”

And, Priestner had one more justification for making a trade involving a fan favourite goalie in Flodell for Blades’ fans still scratching their heads as to why these moves were made.

“The way I see it, it’s a 4-for-3 kind of situation. We get to play four quality players every single night in Kubic in net, Fiala as our captain on the back end, Shmyr and Hebig (up front). We get to play them all every night instead of three of those.”

“We scored 190 goals last year. If we would’ve moved a guy like Braylon Shmyr for a draft pick, which is basically what we were being offered for our 20-year-olds was draft picks. Nobody wants us to trade for draft picks anymore. That was two years ago!”

There may be no satisfying some Saskatoon fans, but the Blades chose to go the offence route with their overage players (Shmyr led the Bridge City Bunch last season with 35 goals and 66 points while Hebig had 69 points in 59 games in 2015-16 before sitting out all of last year due to injury) rather than the defence and goaltending strategy.

Time will tell if it was the right way to go when it comes to qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since 2013.

Pacman Points – Back on Monday, the Blades chipped three players off their roster…re-assigning a pair of 2001-born players in goaltender Nolan Maier and defenceman Zachary Ashton, while releasing 1998-born left winger Cole Johnson.

Defenceman Libor Hajek was still in the main training camp of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. The 19-year-old Czech import suited up for the Bolts in their pre-season opener…a 2-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes. Hajek played just under 20 minutes, recording three shots-on-goal, one hit and two blocked shots. Mixed into his playing was just over three minutes worth on the power play and just over four minutes in penalty-killing situations. It’s not yet known if Hajek will be returned to Saskatoon for Friday’s regular-season opener against the Broncos.

As of Wednesday, here’s what the 2017-18 roster looked like…

FORWARDS (16):

Left Wing                               Centre                           Right Wing

Braylon Shmyr (97)*              Cameron Hebig (97)*     Josh Paterson (99)

Gage Ramsay (98)                   Kirby Dach (01)               Bradly Goethals (98)

Logan Christensen (99)          Chase Wouters (00)       Michael Farren (00)

Lukus MacKenzie (99)            Brandon Machado (00) Caleb Fantillo (98)

Arjun Atwal (99)                      Dryden Michaud (98)      Logan Doust (01)

#Matt Mosher (00)

 

DEFENCE (8):

Left Defence                           Right Defence

Libor Hajek (98)^                    Evan Fiala (97)*

Jackson Caller (99)                  Seth Bafaro (00)

Mark Rubinchik (99)^             Jantzen Leslie (99)

Jake Kustra (99)                      Payton McIsaac (00)

 

GOALIES (2):

Ryan Kubic (98)

Joel Grzybowski (99)#

^=import player

*=overage player

#has yet to play a W.H.L. game