More Blades Trades (and WHL openness complaint)

The Blades have made two more deals in the last couple days, further reducing their overage glut down to seven players for three spots (I'm not counting players with signed NHL contracts who probably won't be back).

First they traded forward Jessey Astles to the Tri-City Americans for a conditional 2014 6th round bantam pick. The conditions on the pick, I'm sure, are that Astles must make the Americans roster. He's not a scorer  but brings toughness and leadership to the Ams; whether that's enough to allow him to win an overage spot against some good competition (Mitch Topping, Zach Yuen, Phil Tot, Lukas Walter, Tyson Dallman) will be up to Astles in training camp I guess.

The second trade was last night and it saw overage forward Lukas Sutter dealt to the Red Deer Rebels for '95 defenceman Kevin Pochuk and 2014 3rd and 7th round bantam picks.

Sutter is a 2012 2nd round pick of the NHL's Winnipeg Jets and so he could yet end up playing pro hockey next year if the Jets sign him. However, last season was not a good season for him - certainly not as good as his draft year of 2011-12 - and so it seems highly likely that the Jets will wait another year before deciding whether to sign him or not. They do have until June 1, 2014 to sign him, so odds are that he'll be in Red Deer playing for his Uncle Brent next year. Meanwhile, Pochuk was caught in a glut of returning defencemen in Red Deer (six other returning d-men besides himself; seven if you count Matt Dumba who isn't certain to return, plus they need to make room for incoming blueline prospects like Vukie Mpofu and Kaleb Denham) and is very badly needed in Saskatoon where the only returning defenceman under the age of 20 is 17 year old Nelson Nogier. So the deal works out very well for Pochuk for sure, he should get a lot of ice time in Saskatoon whereas in Red Deer he might have been on the bubble to even be on the team.

One other thing, there are conditions on the deal which were not mentioned in either the Blades or the Rebels press releases about the trade - if you read those two linked press releases you would come away with the impression that the deal is Sutter for Pochuk, the 3rd, and the 7th, done deal and no conditions.

As it turns out, that is not the case - both the 3rd and 7th round picks are conditional. The 3rd round pick only transfers to Saskatoon if Sutter comes back to the WHL and doesn't turn pro. The 7th round pick only goes to Saskatoon if Pochuk doesn't make the Blades roster. So if Sutter turns pro and Pochuk makes the Blades, then this deal is Kevin Pochuk for nothing. Big difference all of a sudden, huh?

So, moving to the second part of this post, this is why it really irks me that the WHL and its teams (some of its teams anyway) can't seem to bring themselves to mention these details when announcing trades. Why can fans not be told of the conditions on trades? I can't think of any single reason why these details would be kept from fans.

I'd like to see them lay out all conditions on trades, as well as tell us which team's draft picks are being traded in these deals when a team has more than one pick in a given round - the OHL and QMJHL manage to tell us which team's picks are moved, and those leagues are still in business so we know the release of this information can be done safely.

The reason I mention that last part is because Red Deer owns two 2014 3rd round picks - but good luck figuring out whose picks they owned, and/or which one they'll be giving to Saskatoon for Sutter.

Let's try though. In order:

1) Red Deer traded a 2014 3rd round pick to Vancouver for Matt Bellerive on September 24, 2012. Presumably this was their own pick they traded since they didn't have any others at the time.

2) Red Deer traded Joel Hamilton to Vancouver on May 8, 2013, for a 2014 3rd round bantam pick. Now, whose pick was that? Was it Vancouver's own pick? Was it Red Deer's pick from the Bellerive trade being returned? Or was it Kelowna's pick, which Vancouver owned from the Jackson Whistle deal on September 7, 2012?

3) Red Deer trades a conditional 2014 3rd round pick to Saskatoon in the Sutter deal yesterday. Whose pick was that? Was it Vancouver's pick from the Hamilton deal above? Was it Red Deer's own pick from the Hamilton deal above, via the Bellerive trade? Was it Kelowna's pick from the Hamilton deal above, via the Whistle trade? Or was it Saskatoon's own pick, which Red Deer acquired in the Adam Kambeitz/Christian Stockl trade on October 8, 2012?

Want to complicate #3 even further? Saskatoon acquired Seattle's 2014 3rd round pick in return for Kambeitz on January 10, 2013. Well, sometimes deals have conditions that "Team A will give Team B their best pick in the X round, should they have more than one", or something like that. What if that condition was on the pick in the Kambeitz/Stockl trade between Saskatoon and Red Deer? In that case, the 3rd rounder the Blades would be giving the Rebels could very well be Seattle's pick and not their own pick. Etc, etc. You can see how this becomes impossible for fans to follow very quickly unless the league starts making these details and conditions public, as well as clarifying which teams' picks are being moved.

So: how about it, WHL?