It has been a struggle to find positives to blog about this year - but we need that bonus money so here is another riveting State of the Loons!
Our first of many moves when taking over for the Ottawa Barracudas was a blockbuster with Siberia. At the time it was a very controversial trade that required a long, tough 85-minute long phone call with the previous commissioner. But after days of negotiations Silvio and I hammered this deal out:
SIB trades Pierre-Luc Dubois-p, Jakub Zboril-p, Erik Brannstrom-p, Brett Howden-p, Julius Nattinen-p, Z. McIntyre-M, T. Greiss & $2M to NEW for C. Hellebuyck, N. Schmaltz-M, M. Stone, M. Streit, Josh Norris-p & Adam Huska-p...
For Siberia the big fish was Connor Hellebuyck. Goalies were of greater importance in the old sim and Connor was young and on the verge of being one of the top goalies in the NHL. Schmaltz was a rising star at the time of the trade on his way to a break out 50 point season in his sophomore campaign. Though looking back it appears that Josh Norris might end up being the biggest catch of the deal for Siberia.
For Capeside it was all about Dubois. We identified PLD as the player that we wanted to build our franchise around. Dubois led the Loons to the playoffs his first two seasons in Capeside while mainly centering our top line. This past offseason we admittedly made a huge mistake and chose to trade Dubois to Sudbury in order to move up in the draft. Last week we began working to rectify that mistake...
After multiple attempts to engage Sudbury in trade discussions around Dubois we came up with a new plan, we needed Austin Matthews. It took some time and an outrageous offer but we finally got Bismark to consider trading away Matthews. We thought we had him and we already putting together our offer to Sudbury when a trade block came through from Bismark announcing to the league that Matthews was available. We should have been happy that part of our plan had worked however now we had to compete with 20 other CCHL teams to get our best trade chip. We still felt that our offer of multiple first-round draft picks along with Tim Stutzle and another top prospect was a strong offer and could still land Matthews. After an anxious few hours, we were relieved to hear from Bismark that it was down to our offer and a Sudbury offer. We were transparent with Bismark and explained we were really just looking to flip Matthews for Dubois and some Sudbury prospects, but we would be willing to rework our offer if he chose to deal with Sudbury and is able to obtain Dubois. When all was said and done a three-team deal was completed sending Matthews to Sudbury, Dubois to Capeside, and a combination of multiple 2022 firsts and great prospects to Bismark. Everyone got what they wanted.
PLD was rightly frustrated with us when we contacted him via Zoom to inform him that he is coming back to Capeside. He expressed feeling betrayed and devalued after being traded away for a draft pick and was disgusted at the thought of playing with the roster that we were putting out on the ice now. We presented him with our rebuilding plan and went over the prospects that should be ready to contribute over the next two seasons. We also guaranteed PLD that we would continue to look to improve our current roster when opportunities arise and we handed him our very first and probably last no-trade clause to his contract.
In our next State of the Loons we will focus on our prospect pool and their development.
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