Jones to Portland

Credit to the Portland Tribune, who broke the story last night - top 2013 NHL draft prospect Seth Jones has signed on with the Portland Winterhawks. The Winterhawks have called a press conference for this afternoon in which they will presumably make it "official" - although Jones' statements to the Tribune pretty much do that already.

Obviously this is big news for the WHL, landing a player who has a pretty good chance at going in the top five of next year's NHL draft and who knows, maybe even #1.

Adding a player like Jones is a huge boost for the Winterhawks, who are looking at losing a big chunk of the core of their 2011-12 team for next year - besides the obvious loss of their three overagers, the Hawks are probably going to be without forwards Sven Bartschi, Brad Ross, and Marcel Noebels, defencemen Joe Morrow and Troy Rutkowski, and goaltender Mac Carruth - all of whom are likely to be moving on to pro hockey next year after long and successful junior careers. Those are some pretty significant losses so being able to add a player like Jones should go a long ways towards offsetting the loss of defencemen like Morrow and Rutkowski, at least.

Now the next question becomes, "what is Portland going to give up to Everett for Jones?". Apparently the framework for a deal is in place, so hopefully the details of exactly what the Silvertips will get from Portland to complete the trade will be revealed tonight at that press conference as well. Unless the deal includes roster players off Portland's current roster of course - then we won't find out until the season ends. But if it's just draft picks and/or prospects off Portland's list, they should be able to announce it.

A player of Jones' calibre is worth a lot of talent in return. Even if Jones is a one-and-done type player (plays 2012-13 in Portland, gets picked in the NHL draft and sticks in the NHL as a 19 year old in 2013-14), I would expect the return for him to be pretty high. Consider that Portland surrendered two first round bantam picks to get Noebels for a half-season this year - Jones is probably going to be much more of an impact player than Noebels is. And that's even considering that Noebels has played pretty well for Portland.