Hartley Miller's Slap-Shots: June 8th Edition

By Hartley Miller

Short term gain can turn into long term pain.  In their Royal Bank Cup Season, the Prince George Spruce Kings bolstered their roster with many deals. Was it worth it? 

At the January 10^th trade deadline, the Kings made a number of strategic moves. The biggest deal involved obtaining the Fort McMurray Oil Barons leading scorer, Tyler Helfrich, in return for defenseman Bobby Hineman and future considerations. The “futures” are Kings Playoff MVP Chris Shudo and reliable forward Jeremy Roberts.

Spruce Kings Coach/GM Ed Dempsey doesn’t regret this move indicating that he would make the same deal again. "Absolutely! We were looking strictly at the RBC tournament to give ourselves a chance. We needed a gifted offensive player and Helfrich paid dividends for us.”

Other moves included: acquiring blueliner Nicholas Rioux from Quesnel for futures (which has become the popular PG native Curt Morrison); getting goalie Jordan White from Quesnel, obtaining forward Jason Yuel from the Winnipeg Saints; and attaining sniper Alain Joanette from the Bancroft (Ontario) Hawks.  All these trades involved the Spruce Kings giving up future considerations and/or cash.

Next season, Helfrich (RPI) and Rioux (St Cloud State) will be playing at College. Yuel has now graduated, Joanette is expected to go back to Ontario, and White has been returned to Quesnel.

Dempsey defends his moves by saying, “Obviously we wanted to do the best we could in this particular year so high risk high reward.  The bottom line in the whole thing was everybody knew when we started this thing two years ago that we were going to do whatever we had to do, whether it was as an organization or as a player to give ourselves the best chance we possibly could in the RBC and part of that is trades.”

I can appreciate Dempsey’s perspective, but these changes, in general, have backfired. The deals were also made to improve the team in the regular season and to generate playoff revenue with an anticipated long post season run, neither of which happened. The Kings were 5^th at the trade deadline and stayed there. They also made a quick exit in the first round of the playoffs. Without being the “bearer of bad news” it's not difficult to report that this team would still have been 5^th and out in the first round of the playoffs whether or not the Kings had made the deals.  

On the flip side, without these trades, the team would have been a “flop” in the RBC. Instead they reached the final with the newcomers playing a key role.

However, playing an extra game or two in the national championship doesn’t nearly compensate for the quality of players they unloaded.  Shudo, Roberts, Morrison, and perhaps, White, will all play for their respective new teams next season. Meanwhile, the Spruce Kings have little to show for their shortsightedness, except for lost dollars.

Even Dempsey admits the future took a hit saying, “Well definitely. Anytime you give up quite a bit, it puts you in a position where you have to retool. But, realistically if you look at the history of the B.C. Hockey League basically everybody turns over 8 or  9 guys on any given year, and that's probably the number we are looking at, although it might end up about 10.”   Again a terrific spin!

Developing a hockey team isn’t about quantity of players, but rather quality. Regardless of the number, the Kings have lost most of their top guns. The team recently recruited six new players, all who played Junior B last season. And I thought the days of Junior B Hockey at the Coliseum were long gone.

From the quote rack:

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And how was your week?

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