Prospects are just that. Until they hit the ice and prove themselves, they are just prospects. Same with draft picks. They haven't proven anything yet at the WHL level. Still, with that in mind, you have to be impressed by what T-birds General Manager Bil LaForge and his team of scouts have done with the last two WHL Drafts. They've accrued a lot of prospects and draft picks. They've signed what most consider, high end talent for the future.
What LaForge did on Draft day 2020 is exhibit A. He took a player, certainly a good player, in goalie Roddy Ross and turned him potentially into two second and one fourth round draft picks. He then used one of those second round picks to choose a player he obviously thought was the premier goalie talent in the 2020 draft. It was a move that cost very little in the big picture, but could pay huge dividends in the future.
Sure they lose the talented, 20 year old Ross for next season, but Seattle has two young goalies in 18 year old Blake Lyda and 17 year old Thomas Milic who they strongly believe in and now they've drafted another goalie of the future. Was Seattle going to win it all with Ross between the pipes next season? With the young roster they will ice, the odds were very much against that. Remember, LaForge and the T-birds spent zero to bring Ross into the fold in January of 2019. No draft pick was used to get him here, no trade was made. All they did was list and sign him.
Now to continue, lets start with the premise that a new GM gets to, or at least wants to, build a team that fits his style. He wants to put together a team that will play a brand of hockey that he thinks will win championships. To acquire those players, he may have to flush out some of the players he inherited. He has to assess where the team he took over, is on the junior hockey life cycle. For LaForge, who took the reigns in the spring of 2018, the T-birds were still coming off a cycle that saw them win a league title in 2017. They were on the down slope. They were still good enough to compete for the postseason but, after player graduations, the roster for a few seasons wasn't seen as championship caliber. That's just the nature of the beast. You go up, you go down.
I'm sure LaForge recognized he inherited a team in transition. What he most likely wanted to do was make the transition period as short as possible. He wants to get the organization back up to the top quickly and keep it there. It may mean a little short term pain for the fan base. Good and popular players might get traded away to accumulate enough draft capital to get your brand of player into the system.
Sure Seattle could have held on to players like Dillon Hamaliuk, Matthew Wedman and Jake Lee, to name a few. Would it have put them in position to win a banner? That's debatable. Those players all went to Kelowna and that team barely finished ahead of the T-birds in the Western Conference standings. So, if Seattle had kept them, maybe they finish ahead of the Rockets instead of vice versa, but holding onto them might have also meant a longer climb back to the top of the standings because they wouldn't have gathered the draft capital to hasten the climb back up.
Yes, there is no guarantee that all these moves will equal banners and Chynoweth Cups. You are competing against 21 other teams with the same goal. But what is it they say? If you ain't tryin' to move forward, you're standing still. If there is one thing I've noticed being around Bil LaForge for nearly two seasons now, it's that he doesn't like to stand still. If his feet aren't moving the cogs in his brain are. I've learned he has a definite mold for a successful WHL player; fast. Fast of feet, fast of thought, fast of hands. He's communicated that to Player Personnel Director Cal Filson and his team of scouts and they go get him those type players.
In a very short period he has wheeled and dealed to acquire high picks, signing most of them so far. There are the first round picks Kai Uchacz, Jordan Gustafson, Kevin Korchinski and Sam Oremba. Now, add in the second round picks Lucas Ciona, Conner Roulette, Spencer Penner, Gabe Ludwig, Brayden Dube and Scott Ratzlaff. That's ten players from just the first and second rounds of the last three Bantam Drafts. That is essentially half a team. We haven't even mentioned 2018 third rounder Milic. We haven't spoken of other signed recent draft picks in Sam Popowich, Reid Schaefer, Mekai Sanders and Nico Myatovic.
It also doesn't include many of the 2020 selections like third rounder Sawyer Mynio or any of the other unsigned picks from the past two years, not to mention the other draft capital that has been acquired and put in the vault for future seasons. That includes extra first and second round selections. Lets also not forget Landon Dauner and Drew Mackie from the initial US Prospects Draft earlier this year.
Even with that, we've only touched the surface because LaForge has also scouted and signed or traded for some pretty strong talent in Jared Davidson, Matt Rempe, Brendan Williamson, Blake Lyda and Jeremy Hanzel. More importantly he'll never be satisfied. He will always be looking to add to his talent base. Not everyone will work out. So far he has turned four or five former players potentially into a dozen future T-birds. There will be some misses among the hits. No one bats a thousand but LaForge and the rest of his lineup are going to get in some healthy swings when at the plate. The goal is to get back to the top and stay there or at least make those down turns as short as possible. I'm looking forward to seeing his work play out.
Stay safe. Wash your hands!
