Rockets trade Tomas Soustal to Edmonton Oil Kings
Czech winger scored 47 goals in 175 games with Kelowna
The Kelowna Rockets have traded forward Tomas Soustal to the Edmonton Oil Kings in exchange for a fourth round pick in the 2018 WHL Bantam Draft.
Soustal was entering his fourth season with the Rockets after being picked 60th overall by Kelowna in the 2014 CHL Import Draft.
“The number of over-age players we can have is only three, and with (Carsen) Twarynski coming back, that gave us an extra guy,” said Rockets General Manager Bruce Hamilton.
“We also had three Europeans (with Marek Skvrne and Libor Zabransky) and we’re only allowed to carry two. We just felt we needed to go with the two younger European players.
“We feel this is a really good situation for Tomas to be going to Edmonton. He’s going to a really nice city, and to a team that’s up and coming. He’s going to be counted on to score a lot of goals for them, and he’s going to be a very important part of their team.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that we wanted to make the trade, but we had to simply due to numbers.”
In 175 regular season games with Kelowna, the native of Unicov, Czech Republic, tallied 47 goals and 66 assists for 113 points while compiling a plus-51 rating and 163 penalty minutes. The 6-3, 200-pound forward also collected 13 goals and 14 assists for 27 points in 54 post-season games. Soustal helped the Rockets win the Ed Chynoweth Cup in 2014-15.