In a season beset by bad luck and bad performance, Barrie Colts fans will soon get some clarity ahead of next week’s Ontario Hockey League trade deadline.
That’s because in the coming days the Colts are expected to move out at least a few older players in return for younger ones and draft picks. The anticipated trades should also hand more playing time to the squad’s younger members, with an eye toward next season and beyond.
The Colts entered this season with an open mind, but a series of injuries, most notably to third-year defenceman Beau Akey and overage forward Jacob Frasca, have combined with poor play to leave them out of a playoff position in the Eastern Conference.
Colts general manager and head coach Marty Williamson has little choice but to sell. The overage deadline is Tuesday and roster-wide freeze falls on Wednesday.
Frasca, fellow overagers Connor Punnett and Anson Thornton, who has yet to suit up for the Colts this season, are the most likely to move.
Czech import Eduard Sale could also be dealt.
And it won’t be a surprise to see at least one other 2004- and/or 2005-born player also moved.
But it’s not all bleak.
The Colts have some decent building blocks in its collection of 2006- and 2007-born players and prospects.
Defencemen Kashawn Aitcheson, who almost single-handedly tied the game late on Thursday night on a dramatic end-to-end rush in a 2-1 home loss to the Sarnia Sting, and Jack Brauti have both had their moments.
Akey’s return next season can’t come a moment too soon with — fingers crossed — his development not stunted after being shut down for the year with a shoulder ailment.
Up front, Cole Beaudoin has taken a step up and there are indications that Riley Patterson is finding his groove.
Beau Jelsma and Sale, assuming they remain in Barrie next week and next season, will also help form the forward core.
Shamar Moses will never win any awards for his finesse, but the 16-year-old has shown an edgy, blunt-force presence in his rookie season.
Overager Ben West and Sam Hillebrandt have provided the Colts with capable goaltending. At 18, Hillebrandt will serve as the No. 1 netminder in 2024-25 and likely return to the world junior tournament with the American squad, where he was their No. 3 goalie this year.
It is a start, but it’s also hard to see the Colts seriously challenging for an OHL title with the young core they currently have — which is why the events of the next few days are critically important.
The Colts need to add good, young pieces and they need to continue to do well at the OHL Priority Selection, such as they have the last two drafts.
The CHL Import Draft is another matter entirely. Sale has not played how you would expect a first-round NHL draft pick to play. He has not been terrible, but you can be sure both the Colts and the Seattle Kraken, the team who took him 20th overall last summer, were expecting more through his first half-season in North America.
The Kraken could take his development out of the Colts’ hands by engineering a trade next week. Sending him to the American Hockey League or back to Europe next season is also an option.
There remains much grey area with Sale. It was black and white with Swiss forward Endo Meier; it did not work out and he’s back playing his native country.
Such misses cannot happen this summer when the Colts next participate in the import draft.
Whatever takes place through two weekend games against tough opponents – the London Knights on the road tonight and Soo Greyhounds back at Sadlon Arena on Saturday – and then the deadline next week, you can’t help but wonder how not acting more decisively last year at this time makes the disappointment of this season more acute.
A year ago, the Colts added Braden Hache on the back end, a shrewd move, as Hache is now the captain of the Saginaw Spirit, who are hosting the Memorial Cup this spring.
But the local team did little up front, adding depth pieces Tyler Savard and Ethan Quick when much bigger prizes were available.
Hindsight is always easy, but the Colts electing to not make bigger moves – and we don’t mean Shane Wright, who eventually went to Windsor – became a huge factor when leading scorer Evan Vierling was injured early in the series against the North Bay Battalion.
The Colts got beat in seven games by a bigger, deeper North Bay team and then watched, like everyone else, when the Peterborough Petes skated off with the OHL crown, helped by the Knights having to use its third-string goalie in the championship series.
The Petes got lucky, but good fortune favours the brave.
Any hope of building back into that position starts by tearing down now.
