Post-trade deadline records

Just a quick little chart for fun here....these are the team winning percentages before and after the trade deadline:

Before After Diff. Brandon Wheat Kings 0.372 0.385 +0.013 Calgary Hitmen 0.721 0.611 -0.110 Edmonton Oil Kings 0.72 0.776 +0.056 Everett Silvertips 0.405 0.370 -0.035 Kamloops Blazers 0.698 0.648 -0.050 Kelowna Rockets 0.738 0.741 +0.003 Kootenay Ice 0.402 0.661 +0.259 Lethbridge Hurricanes 0.533 0.292 -0.241 Medicine Hat Tigers 0.488 0.571 +0.083 Moose Jaw Warriors 0.407 0.426 +0.019 Portland Winterhawks 0.866 0.714 -0.152 Prince Albert Raiders 0.631 0.444 -0.187 Prince George Cougars 0.354 0.375 +0.021 Red Deer Rebels 0.556 0.700 +0.144 Regina Pats 0.455 0.346 -0.109 Saskatoon Blades 0.537 0.817 +0.280 Seattle Thunderbirds 0.417 0.393 -0.024 Spokane Chiefs 0.671 0.554 -0.117 Swift Current Broncos 0.489 0.615 +0.126 Tri-City Americans 0.598 0.625 +0.027 Vancouver Giants 0.256 0.407 +0.151 Victoria Royals 0.551 0.484 -0.067

There's surprisingly (to me anyway) little change for a lot of teams. 

The only really big changes were the improvements by Saskatoon and Kootenay, and the dropoffs by Lethbridge and Prince Albert. With Kootenay, they made almost no changes at the deadline (traded Erik Benoit to Saskatoon was about the extent of it) and were already on the upswing at the time so the deadline had little to do with things. 

Prince Albert made some medium-scale moves, nothing major, but began to slide. They won 25 games in the 2012 portion of the season but have won only 10 in 2013.

Lethbridge made two moves to get bigger and grittier (Mike Simpson from Kootenay and the Merkley/Derko trade with Swift Current) and promptly dropped from 4th place in the East right out of the playoffs, winning only 5 of 24 games since the deadline. Not to say Merkley was THAT valuable to them but  on the other hand, Swift Current did have the 5th-biggest improvement.

For Lethbridge, that's four straight years out of the playoffs now, an eternity in a cyclical league like major junior. The four years also coincides with the employment of Rich Preston as coach and G.M., which begs the question of whether Preston is going to get a 5th year to try to make the playoffs after the calamitous finish to this season.

For Saskatoon, everyone made fun of them for the entire first half of the year and they paid some pretty steep prices for players at the trade deadline, but they accomplished what they wanted to: they remade their team into a contender. No team in the WHL was better than Saskatoon's .817 since the deadline and in fact it's not even really close in that department either. They may be paying for this for years to come but they have a legitimate chance to win a WHL title and an even better chance to win a Memorial Cup. Win that and it'll all be worthwhile, right.