While some of the Ontario Hockey League’s powerhouses are stacking themselves for the playoff stretch, the Ottawa 67’s aren’t ready to mortgage their future.
So there may not be much action for the 67’s, who swung a deal with Mississauga early last week (picking up Merrick Rippon, Shaw Boomhower and Jacob Cascagnette for Matt Foget and three draft picks), heading into Wednesday’s trade deadline (Tuesday for overagers).
Said 67’s GM James Boyd Sunday: “What’s the cost? Anything that we’re looking at right now involves subtracting a significant piece from our team and we’re not going to do that. That’s why it’s been difficult to make a deal. It’s important not to lose sight of what we’re trying to achieve here and stick to the plan. We’re not going to weaken ourselves in one area to improve another.
“If we can improve our team now, that’s great. But that improvement has to be here next year and the year after. We’ve got a great young nucleus of players, we definitely don’t want to do anything for short-term gain that’s going to hurt our future plan.”
One area where the 67’s could get better is in goaltending, but that theme seems common around the league.
“We’d like to have a better result at this point in the season, but our goalies have won us some games,” said Boyd. “Everybody would like to have a Mikey DiPietro (Windsor), everybody would love to have a Jeremy Helvig (Kingston), but there’s not enough supply. We believe in our goalies, we develop our goalies. I don’t think we get outgoaltended.