Four days before the BCHL trade deadline, the Chilliwack Chiefs made their big move.
The junior A club sent star winger Austin Plevy out-of-province, dealing the 19-year-old to the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Brooks Bandits.
In return, the Chiefs get 18-year-old forward Mason Boh and future considerations.
Boh, listed at five-foot-10 and 170 pounds, had two goals and seven points in 30 games with the Bandits.
“He’s a hard-working energy guy that can contribute offensively,” said Chiefs general manager and head coach Harvey Smyl. “He hasn’t done it much at the junior level, but sometimes it takes a while to get in a groove and I think there’s offensive upside.”
Playing on an excellent Bandits squad (24-9-7), Smyl thinks Boh may have lacked chances to shine.
“He plays on a very good club and didn’t get a lot of opportunities in different situations,” Smyl said.
Future considerations in junior A transactions usually denotes cash.
But last year’s trade deadline deal that landed Philip Zielonka in Chilliwack included futures that ended up being Shay Laurent. According to Smyl, there will be another shoe to drop in the Plevy deal.
“The future considerations are hockey related and it’s not a matter of Brooks writing us a cheque,” he said.
Smyl’s major move comes a couple days after Surrey dealt big guns Nicholas Pierog and Brett Mulcahy (to Penticton and Vernon). Watching the team he’s chasing unload two stars might have made Smyl breathe easier moving Plevy, though he said the Eagle moves didn’t factor in.
“What Surrey did was irrelevant to what our organization was doing,” he said. “We had to talked to a number of teams for quite some time. The push really started after Christmas.”
The deadline officially looms Friday.
“We’re looking to do more, but we don’t have the luxury of having a lot of cards to play,” Smyl said. “If we send guys out for futures, we still need to ice a team. And we still feel we have a chance (at playoffs), so we’re not going to just gut it. We’ll make an attempt, but it’s unlikely we’ll do anything too dramatic.”