The Canmore Eagles made a pair of moves at the AJHL trade deadline, shipping out lumbering defenceman Kevin Wolf to Yorkton of the SJHL and signing Mackenzie Watson to a full-time AJHL card on Saturday (Jan. 10).
Wolf, a towering 6 foot 6 defender, had just goal and one assist in 22 games with the Eagles.
He was acquired from the Seattle Thunderbirds of the WHL after the Eagles shipped out Ashton McLeod. Wolf never found his game with the Eagles and he struggled to break into the lineup, even with the Eagles missing two of their top defenders, Nik Kosman and Jakob Lavoie. He got off to a rocky start with the club, falling on backup goaltender Levi Nelson, knocking him out of action for six weeks.
Watson, 19, has two points in 10 games with the Eagles, and was picked up from the Camrose Kodiaks in late 2014. Watson has bounced around the AJHL, as the Eagles are his fourth team in four years. He was previously listed as an affiliate with the junior A club, and was added as a depth player after Kosman and Lavoie went down with injuries.
With the moves, the Eagles have established their 23-man roster for the rest of the season.
General Manager and head coach Andrew Milne said last week the team had some “dead weight” on the team and needed a spark to ignite the club, but he failed to pull the trigger on any sizable deadline deals. He wasn’t behind the bench for the first period of Saturday’s game against the Calgary Canucks, and pushed until the 10 p.m. deadline to pull off a deal.
“We were very active on a lot of fronts, but at the end of the day, we didn’t find the right deal to help our hockey club,” said Milne. “Despite our mediocre record to date, we believe in the quality of players in our dressing room and that we can be a very competitive hockey club down the stretch.
“It would have been easy to part with some of our veteran players to help rebuild for future years, but we didn’t do that. Now it will be up to our players in the dressing room to show us what they can do as a group.”
