It’s my Parting Shot to take one last stab at explaining why the Saskatoon Blades did what they did at the trade deadline…..
The short term thinkers don’t like what was done. They looked at the standings and said, hey, we’re in first place – we’ve got top-flite players – let’s go for it again!
Alright, let’s seriously look at what that might’ve looked like – short term and long term.
The common theme was the Bridge City Bunch had no assets to trade to improve their roster. That’s not entirely true. They still have first round picks in the 2027 and 2028 Prospects Draft and it would’ve cost those two picks, plus other ancillary draft choices AND two or three of the team’s current top prospects in order to acquire – say a Brayden Yager or an Andrew Cristall. The Blue and Gold would’ve been all-in, but might as well not log on to the Prospects’ Draft Zoom call until after for the next four years – with zero guarantee that they would win the Ed Chynoweth Cup!
Others wanted the Blades to stand pat with the team they had. Keep Molendyk, Lisowsky, Riche, Hansen and Volotovskii. Saskatoon would, possibly, be good enough to win the East Division and, likely, one playoff round. But, with Lethbridge and Calgary being all-in for sure – and Medicine Hat likely to look elsewhere for assets similar to what they got from the Bridge City Bunch – the Blue and Gold would be out after the second round of the post-season and still sitting without draft picks until the fourth round this year and not until the eighth round in 2026. The future wouldn’t be quite as bleak as it would’ve been in the previous scenario, but not signiciantly better!
That leaves us with what the Blades did. The early returns are a shootout loss in three games with the “New Wave” line-up. It’s going to take time, but as head coach Dan Da Silva asked and answered to me on last night’s Post-Game Show – last night’s 4-3 shootout loss at SaskTel Centre to Portland was better – make that a lot better – than Friday’s 4-1 setback in Calgary! Two practices helped immensely and more sessions will only make this group better yet!
The current Saskatoon group is good enough to be in the playoffs, maybe even still finish first in the East Division and win a post-season round! But, they have re-stocked draft pick cupboards and a pile of good looking, young players for right now that will only get better over the next season! Or two!! Or even three!!!
That’s the last you’ll here from me on this particular subject – maybe!
That’s my Parting Shot. I’m Les Lazaruk…and it turned out nice again!
