With Trader Mike at the helm, the Prince George Spruce Kings made the climb back to respectability in 2016.
Spruce Kings fans had no idea back in January the return on investment general manager Mike Hawes had arranged for his team when he dealt two of his top forwards, 20-year-olds Jake LeBrun and Bryan Basilico, to the West Kelowna Warriors just before the B.C. Hockey League deadline.
In return, the Kings got 18-year-old forward Tanner Campbell and a player to be named later. While LeBrun and Basilico helped the Warriors run the table all the way to the RBC Cup national junior A championship, the Spruce Kings won just 14 of 58 games and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2011.
That mystery player plucked from the Warriors roster turned out to be 20-year-old centre Brett Mennear, the obvious choice so far this season as the most valuable Spruce King. All he's done since he starting sporting the Kings' crown is shoot and pass his way into a top-five spot in the BCHL scoring race with 17 goals and 47 points in 34 games as the team's top face-off specialist.
Mennear, a Bentley University recruit, has delivered everything the Kings expected and more, and Campbell, until he hurt his neck a few weeks ago, was also making steady contributions offensively with five goals and 19 points in 22 games.
As valuable as those two former Warriors have been, another player from that championship team, 20-year-old defenceman Tyler Anderson, has helped shore up the Spruce Kings back end. To get him they had to give up a proven scorer, 20-year-old homegrown winger Braiden Epp, in a one-for-one trade in late September, but Anderson is having a career year playing for Prince George. He's big, he's physical, and he has what rates as the hardest shot on the team.
The Kings paid the price last season for bringing in a large crop of young untested players new to the junior A ranks and they took their lumps. But Hawes has a sharp eye for talent and it's no fluke the Kings are back in a playoff position just past the midseason mark.
Forwards Jarod Hovde, Kyle Johnson, Ethan de Jong, Parker Colley and Chong Hyun Lee paid their dues as BCHL rookies last season and are now playing with confidence, blending in with rookies Ben Poisson, Travis Schneider and Ben Brar and couple of 20-year-old imports, Keegan Ward and Hunter Luhmann, to give the Kings well-distributed scoring punch.
But there's no doubt it hurt to lose top-line winger Jamie Huber, one of Hawes's top off-season recruits. The 19-year-old was connecting on nearly a point-per-game pace but got homesick and returned to Ontario in early December, leaving a big hole on the left side.
The forwards have benefitted from an older revamped defence which includes junior veterans Anderson, Connor Russell and Adam Burnett, and newcomers Drew Lennon, Liam Watson-Brawn, Sam De Melo and Trent Huitema. Collectively they move the puck up ice quickly, make smart passes and have the wheels to get back in time if they get caught up ice making a turnover. Russell was the futures part of a deal Hawes made with Cowichan Valley in January which sent forward Corey Hoffman to the Caps.
Goalie Tavin Grant still figures in the future for the WHL Cougars and they have to be pleased with the 18-year-old's progress as an everyday junior A starter the past month, ever since 19-year-old netminder Stefan Wornig was sidelined with an undiagnosed ailment. The six-foot-six Wornig had been playing well coming over to the Kings in the off-season in a trade that sent defenceman Adam Brubacher to Powell River.
The Spruce Kings recovered from a slow start in which they won just one of their first seven games but they will have to be road warriors the next two months to stay in the playoff hunt. That's the price they have to pay for having so many home games the first four months of the season. Just four of their 11 games in January and only one of 11 games in February will be played at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena.
