By Matthew Gourlie
The Western Hockey League trade deadline is looking like it could be an arms race.
Monday, the WHL-leading Moose Jaw Warriors feel they got even better with a pair of significant trades.
The afternoon started with the Warriors acquiring Vince Loschiavo from Kootenay in exchange for 2001-born forward Jakin Smallwood and a conditional third round pick.
Then the Warriors dropped a bombshell by dealing 19-year-old Noah Gregor and a 2018 eighth round pick in exchange for 18-year-old Ryan Peckford and a fourth round pick in ’18.
It’s the rare junior hockey trade that sees two contending teams swap significant players from their lineups who are both in the prime of their junior careers.
“For whatever reason, both teams made a decision to consider moving certain players and we were able to put a hockey deal together,” said Warriors general manager Alan Millar. “This is Victoria looking for a veteran guy who can play centre and us looking for a bigger body, who has skill and plays hard. Peckford is a guy we think can play on the left side with (Brett) Howden and (Jayden) Halbgewachs.”
Peckford is no stranger to playing with high-end talent with speed. This past weekend the six-foot-one winger was playing on the Royals top line with Matthew Phillips and Tyler Soy.
“He’s been consistently in their top-six and on their first power play unit and playing with Soy and Phillips. He’s been a guy who has been playing with good players and that’s the expectation when he gets here,” Millar said.
Gregor had been benched in-game by head coach Tim Hunter at times this season and had been playing on the third line in recent weeks. Still, the San Jose draft pick had more than a point-per-game in each of the last two seasons and has continued that pace this season. Gregor has tallied 14 goals and 36 points in 30 games while serving as one of the Warriors’ assistant captains.
“This is a fresh start for Noah Gregor, who is a great kid, he grew up here. We wish him the best,” Millar said.
Gregor was originally a Victoria third-round draft pick, but was dealt to Moose Jaw right before the 2014 deadline in the Travis Brown trade before ever suiting up for the Royals.
Millar said Peckford is a player that they’ve liked for a long time and expect to make an immediate impact.
“We feel comfortable that we’re putting a player in our lineup that keeps us competitive with what we want to accomplish this year,” Millar said.
Loschiavo gives the Warriors something they had been lacking: a right-handed shot in their forward group. He also scored 29 goals in 62 games a year ago with the Ice and the six-foot-two Winnipeg product has seven goals and 14 points in 28 games this season.
Smallwood, a fifth round pick, has signed and has 25 points in 21 games with midget AAA Leduc this season.
“(Loschiavo) is another bigger body guy, he can shoot the puck and score goals,” Millar said. “He gives us lots of options and lots of depth in our top-nine. We’re adding another veteran guy to a veteran group with the end goal in mind.”
That end goal is the franchise’s first title.
The Warriors are arguably the deepest team in the WHL and they only got deeper Monday. The team heads towards the Jan. 10 trade deadline in a position of relative strength and don’t have any glaring needs to fill. Still, Millar said this deadline isn’t any easier than usual, particularly with the three teams with the best records in the WHL all in your division.
“I don’t think anything is easy this year,” Millar said. “The quality of the teams in the league is excellent. There’s no easy nights right through the whole league. Our division is tough. There’s competition off the ice as well in terms of trying to improve your team with Regina hosting and Swift Current and Brandon playing very well. Saskatoon and P.A. are battling to get into the playoffs.
“The reality is that two very good hockey teams aren’t going to get by the second round. The two-three match-up in our division is going to be brutal and the next round is going to be even more brutal.”
Swift Current certainly tried to help their title hopes and address their forward depth by adding Matteo Gennaro and Beck Malenstyn from Calgary in a seven-player blockbuster on Nov. 25.
“We gave it until the 20 game mark to see what we thought was lacking and I think it was quite evident that we had one line that scoring and we needed to add some secondary scoring,” said Swift Current general manager/head coach Emanuel Viveiros. “We have a real good idea of what we need to do going forward, if it’s possible. But if not, we’re good, we’re fine. We’re very happy with how the younger guys have developed and are playing.”
Defenceman Noah King, for example, has stepped into the Broncos’ top-four and performed well. Viveiros has been happy to be able to give their younger players some valuable experience and their play has given him more confidence in his current roster.
He said that you have to take your rivals into consideration when accessing your moves, but that at the same time “you don’t want to make a move to counter a move.”
While some teams hope this could be their year, the Regina knows they will still be playing come May. The Memorial Cup hosts sit two games above .500 and are in fourth place in the East Division by an 11-point margin.
Given their disappointing start to the season, Pats general manager/head coach John Paddock will surely look to strengthen his roster in the coming weeks.
“I would like to get things done sooner, which is the same stance I had three years ago when we started trading our veteran players, so that they know where they are going, but it doesn’t always work that way,” Paddock told 620 CKRM’s Mitchell Blair on Dec. 5.
While Carl Stankowski proved that an experienced goalie wasn’t a pre-requisite for winning a WHL title last season, goaltending could be the X factor in the East Division post-season chase.
The starting goalie for the top three teams in the division all have negligible playoff experience.
Moose Jaw’s Brody Willms has 20 minutes of playoff experience and Swift Current’s Logan Flodell has 22 minutes from 2015. Brandon’s Logan Thompson has never won a playoff game in his five appearances that total 275 minutes.
Regina’s Tyler Brown does have plenty of playoff experience. He has 35 games and 2,163 minutes logged over the past two seasons as he helped the Pats to the WHL final a year ago. However, Brown also has a losing record, a .888 save percentage and 3.32 goals-against-average so far this season.
Everett’s Carter Hart — the WHL’s goalie of the week for a fourth week running — could be a king-maker if he were dealt, but Everett general manager Garry Davidson told Nick Patterson from the Everett Daily Herald not to bank on it.
“Teams started inquiring months ago, and that’s continued,” Davidson said prior to Friday’s game. “We were keeping an open mind on it and said we weren’t sure we were going to do it, and I’ll be honest, right now I’m telling teams that I don’t see us moving him.”
Which isn’t to say teams won’t keep asking and trying to find a way to entice some teams into being sellers. There are still plenty of 19-year-old stars on the rosters of teams who are fighting for a wild card spot who will be coveted by contenders.
It is only Viveiros’ second trade deadline in the WHL a coach or a GM, but he said it is significantly busier this season.
“Everybody seems to be kicking tires, so I expect it to ramp up even more so. How much happens compared to the discussions, I don’t know, but the discussions will only be going up between now and the deadline,” he said.
With nearly everyone looking to buy and very few teams seemingly willing to sell, the asking price is going to be steep.
While the Warriors made some big deals Monday, they may still have moves still to make.
“We would still like to add a piece of two. At the same time those pieces have to be available and they have to be affordable — or at least make sense to us,” Millar said. “Just because we have a good team doesn’t mean we want to make trades just for the sake of making trades. We like our foundation. We like our group. We just want to add the right piece or two here and (Monday’s trades) were part of that.”
The Warriors own a 25-5-1-1 record despite not having iced a full-strength team all season. They began the year without top defenceman Josh Brook, who missed 25 games and have also lost captain Brett Howden (12 games) and defenceman Jett Woo (14 games) for significant stretches.
“Our team has played very well through a lot of adversity. All of our injuries have been to top guys and we’ve had a lot of guys step up,” Millar said. “People ask if we need to see all of our guys to gauge our team, but we know where our team is at.
“We think we’re a good team — amongst a lot of other good teams — and we’re going to try to improve our team. It’s an exciting year. I don’t know the last time the hockey has been this competitive in Saskatchewan. Certainly with all five times, but particularly with us, Regina and Swift Current. At the end of the day, the Memorial Cup is in Regina and we would like to spoil the party.”
