By George, the gathering Storm was the story of the OHL trade deadline
TORONTO — George Burnett of the Guelph Storm didn’t initially set out to be the busiest general manager ahead of the Ontario Hockey League trade deadline.
But the opportunities to add top-end skill to his roster, including the addition of three returning Canadian world junior team members, was too good to pass up.
“I don’t think we were thinking we’d have six new faces in the last week or so before the deadline,” Burnett said on Wednesday.
“Busy few weeks, don’t know if it started out looking that way but through the Christmas break. We knew we wanted to strengthen our back end with more veteran presence and wanted to add a top-flight forward.”
Burnett, who also coaches the Storm, made five trades between Jan. 4 and the Jan. 10 deadline to fill his club’s voids, and then some, adding key pieces that he hopes will take the Storm deep into the post-season in the OHL’s tough Western Conference alongside the London Knights, Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and Saginaw Spirit.
The former head coach of the Hamilton Bulldogs had already acquired forward MacKenzie Entwistle from his old club, defenceman Markus Phillips from the Owen Sound Attack and defenceman Fedor Gordeev from the Flint Firebirds when he made his biggest trade of the week on Wednesday, getting forwards Nick Suzuki and Zachary Roberts and defenceman Sean Durzi in a second deal with the Attack.
The trades give the Storm two Toronto Maple Leafs draft choices, Durzi and Gordeev, on their blueline.
In all, Burnett shipped out three skaters and 20 draft picks to overhaul his team, which has been relying heavily on rookies recently to stay competitive due to significant injuries to three top players — centre Cam Hillis, winger Pavel Gogolev and defenceman Jack Hanley.
“Our maturity level as a team has improved significantly with the additions we’ve made,” Burnett said. “You can talk about winning and playoffs runs, that’s fine but (now) we have to take care of the details.”
Burnett says that the additions of Suzuki, Entwistle and Phillips weren’t exactly part of a master blueprint, but he had given himself options to make the moves when he shipped out offensive defenceman Ryan Merkley to the Peterborough Petes and forward Tag Bertuzzi to Hamilton in midDecember for eight combined draft picks and Gogolev, who had eight points in four games with Guelph before suffering a lowerbody injury on Jan. 2.
“We didn’t set out to be (draft-) pick poor and we’re not. There were enough picks, some even accumulated before I got here,” said Burnett.
“You could have all the draft picks in the world and if you don’t use them appropriately they’re only as good as how you use them.”
Hillis is expected to rejoin the Storm in mid-February. Hanley has a March timeline on returning and Gogolev is expected back when the playoffs start.
“We have just 29 games remaining, it’s getting people healthy and but also getting everyone on the same page where we’re playing for each other consistently,” Burnett said.