For once the biggest names at the trade deadline for the OHL and WHL went to teams out west.
Welcome back to the forefront, Western Hockey League.
With the WHL and Ontario Hockey League closing their trade periods on Monday, the WHL stole the headlines in terms of big-name movement. The deadline headliners were Canadian world junior teammates Brayden Schenn and Cody Eakin, who will each finish their junior careers wearing new uniforms.
It was a surprising change from the trend, where the biggest names going to different places almost exclusively emerged from the OHL.
The Barrie Colts and Windsor Spitfires made the two biggest trades in advance of the deadline a year ago. Barrie acquired Alex Pietrangelo, the top defenceman at the world juniors that year, from Niagara. The Spitfires answered by plucking power forward Zack Kassian from Peterborough.
Two years ago the deadline's biggest fish was the eventual first-overall pick, John Tavares, who waived his no-trade clause to accept a deal from Oshawa to London. The year before that, the biggest trade also involved London, when they traded world junior gold medalist Steve Mason to the Kitchener Rangers.
But for once, the OHL took a backseat to its western cousin. The changing of the guard came in the form of the jaw-dropping price the Kootenay Ice exchanged for the venerable two-way forward, Eakin. The Swift Current Broncos acquired eight assets in the deal, which included five players and three picks.
The Eakin deal would have been the deadline's biggest, if not for the Saskatoon Blades stepping up and sending an even bigger package to the Brandon Wheat Kings for Schenn.
Brandon acquired four picks -- three of which were first-rounders -- and two prospects (the first two players Saskatoon drafted in last year's bantam draft) for Schenn and a third-round pick.
There's no question the Wheat Kings were the deadline's biggest winners. Schenn played in only two games for Brandon this season after stints with both the Los Angeles Kings and their American Hockey League affiliate in Manchester. His return gave the rebuilding Wheat Kings a valuable asset that only increased in price after he tied the Canadian record for points in a world junior tournament with 18.
Trading Schenn to Saskatoon became a "perfect storm," as Wheat Kings head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon described it. Schenn heads to his hometown Blades, whose chances may never be better than they are now to end the longest championship drought of any major junior team.
"It was a bit of a unique situation in that we were trading a player that didn't play on our team this year," McCrimmon said. "That was part of it and then the hockey club hasn't won enough games in my opinion to justify turning down this opportunity."
Several more players were dealt in both leagues on Monday. The sheer volume from the OHL outweighed the lack of impact players changing hands in deadline chatter. But it wasn't for a lack of trying.
The OHL could have made the same headlines had the back-to-back MasterCard Memorial Cup-champion Windsor Spitfires decided to follow through with their original plan to rebuild.
The Spitfires made it known both Ryan Ellis and Kassian were on the block several weeks before the trade deadline. Much of the OHL dealings were kept at a standstill in anticipation of not one, but two impact players who were being packaged together in trade negotiations.
But general manager Warren Rychel opted to keep both with an unprecedented opportunity to make a run for a third-straight national championship.
In a sense, the biggest news from the OHL deadline was that the two biggest fish, Ellis and Kassian, did not move.
"I was in deep discussion with one team for three months and it never came to fruition," Rychel said, acknowledging only that it was a Western Conference team. "(With) about 30 hours left before the deadline, obviously I had a feeling they didn't want to make the deal. They were nickel and diming the deal.
"If you're not going to pay a price for two of the best players in the CHL you're simply not going to get them."
Saskatoon and Kootenay were willing to pay a premium for the league's top two available players.
In that sense, there was no need to sugarcoat the impact of the deadline's biggest deal.
"Obviously we made one of the biggest trades in WHL history," Blades head coach and general manager Lorne Molleken began in describing the trade at team's press conference.
"We're hoping to have a nice, long (playoff) run," Kootenay general manager Jeff Chynoweth said. "But there's no guarantee we'll get past the first round of the playoffs."
The only guarantee is that this year's deadline will be forever marked as the day the WHL stole the OHL's thunder.
