Teams top off rosters via draft
Rearguard Ryan Gillam the first of 17 players selected
Teams are doing their final tinkering in advance of the 2016 Penney Mazda St. John’s Junior Hockey League season, which begins with two games Friday night. Included in that roster finalization are additions via the league’s first draft of the season.
Defenceman Ryan Gillam was the first overall selection, taken by the CBR Renegades with a pick obtained in a trade in January with the Southern Shore C&W Offshore Breakers, one that sent the rights to forward Liam Hynes to the Breakers.
Gillam, a 6-2, 205-pound 19-year-old from Corner Brook, is a product of the Western Kings major midget program. He split last season between the St. Stephen Aces of the Maritime junior A league and the now-defunct Corner Brook Royals of the Central-West senior circuit.
The second pick was also moved in a trade, this time to the Avalon Capitals from the Northeast Eagles (formerly the Junior Celtics). With it, Avalon took forward Jared Lush who was a point-per-game player and the second-leading scorer (11-21-32) for the provincial major midget Central IcePak last season.
The defending champion Conception Bay North Moorfrost Stars had the third pick and used it to select forward Alex Hudgins, a Nova Scotia native. The Eagles and St. John’s Caps followed by picking, respectively, defenceman Eric Stoodley and centre Loran Whittle, who are both from the Burin Peninsula and played for the 2016 provincial minor midget champs Tri Pen Ice last season. So did another Burin Peninsula product, centre Michael Pittman, who was the last pick of the first round by the Trinity-Placentia Flyers.
In all, 17 players were chosen by the league’s eight teams, including the Mount Pearl Marks Blades.
The league also held a draft of overage players who had been released by their former teams. Each club is permitted a half-dozen overagers, who are players who don’t turn 22 until 2017 and who played in a Hockey Canada-recognized junior league the previous season.
Three overagers were selected — the Eagles took defenceman Justin Boland, who had been with the Renegades in 2015-16; Southern Shore picked up forward Shawn Loveridge who had been with St. John’s; and Northeast added Brandon Pomeroy, another forward who was with St. John’s last season.
The 2016-17 regular-season schedule kicks off 7:15 p.m. Friday at the Bay Arena in Bay Roberts, where the Stars host Avalon in a rematch of last year’s final, one which went the full seven games. The other opening-night contest is at Jack Byrne Arena in Torbay, where the Eagles face the Breakers in a contest with an 8:30 p.m. start.