I will eat my hat if Mews ends up in NCAA next year. He is about to be offered an entry level contract by Calgary this off-season - going NCAA means that he couldn't sign it. Even if we had held onto him, he would have signed his Calgary contract this summer and showed up at our camp in the Fall, all the while asking quietly for a trade. There was absolutely no need to move him except on our terms, which would been a year from now if we weren't contenders.
This takes me to my usual rant about the way in which clubs allow themselves to be held hostage by players. Mews wanted a trade? Tough - Ottawa owns your rights. You play here or you don't play CHL. Don't want to play for the team to whom you just traded? Too bad. Show up or you don't play at all. Players will not hold out or go NCAA - their time in this league is too short. All it would take is one team to hold tough and this bull@*@* would slow down. Letting the inmates run the asylum is bad policy - this is what leads to a team like London dominating the league because they have money and what is considered a geographically desirable spot.
We are entering a dark couple of years for this franchise, I fear. No real plan, not a lot of high end talent on the horizon, and a coach for whom no one wants to play. OSEG had better wake up and start asking some hard questions to Boyd about what the plan is, because that TSN 1200 interview was a disaster...
Sorry for the long post but there is a lot to unpack here.
This “issue” is not as black and white as that.
Previously, players had a choice…CHL or USHL/NCAA. IT was a fair choice. If you preferred the NCAA for whatever reasons the player had, they had an avenue to stroll down. Of course, they had to wait 2-3 years before they could get there but with the Tier II Jr A loop in Ontario, the USHL and BCHL, they had relatively competitive places to lay until they were age appropriate for their NCAA opportunity.
Players could “game the system” by leveraging the NCAA to get what they wanted. The OHL, in an effort to attract players, added the “Defection” rule to make it more palatable for less desirable teams to select those players. Select them and negotiate with them over the summer, try to convince them that the OHL is the better place to play and if it doesn’t’ work out, the league will award you a compensatory draft pick. Great. Players are now less likely to sink in the draft to the more high profile teams that can draft them later than their ranking. It helps provide a mechanism for balance. And, a team that feels they can get the player to sign can then trade for the rights to that player during the defected player window. At least it will cost the acquiring team real assets to obtain the player. Not a bd solution but there are still some problems with it. Regardless, it is better than what it was where a top 5 pick ends up being drafted by London 20th overall every year.
HOWEVER, now, players can float to the NCAA any time they want (starting next season). Great for the players and since this is supposedly a Student Athlete league, great for the CHL. IT allows for more education opportunities. And, on a side bar, it also saves the member teams a ton of money because players are more likely to forgo their Scholarship packages and take the athletic scholarship offered by the American College. But, every positive is always balanced with a negative. The players now have a stick they can use to negotiate with. In the 67’s case, they had Henry Mews that doesn’t’ want to be here. Pretty high profile player. You can call him an elite OHL player. He doesn’t’ want to play for your franchise. He has an opportunity to play elsewhere (Michigan). He can now use that as a hammer to negotiate his trade or at least motivate the team.
As you said, and I have said many times, Calgary is going to offer this kid an ELC this summer or at the next training camp. For Mews to actually go to Michigan, he is going to have to pull an OWEN POWER and turn down the contract offer to remain eligible to play at Michigan. That comes at a lot of risk and there is not one single player agent that would get behind that decision. So, as you said, he is HIGHLY likely to return next season. I agree 100%. However, I think Mews is the type of person to not give a damn about any of that. In fact, he strikes me as the type of person that will go play at Michigan, allow the signing window to expire and reenter the draft and potentially be drafted higher. I honestly think that is an option in his head. I think he is pissed off that he wasn’t a 1st round pick and that led to his demand to be traded because he saw Parekh playing in a pond hockey system in Saginaw rack up the points and get picked in the 1st round. Had he not had to play in the Dave Cameron system, he’d also have racked up the points and been picked int he 1st round. I can almost GUARANTEE you that is what is in his head and that is why he wanted out this offseason.
That leads us to the trade issue for Boyd. He had a choice to make. We could argue either way. I won’t do that because I promised not to talk about Boyd or Cameron or the game by game results this season because we pretty much know how all of this is going to play out. But, we can talk about comparative trade values etc to determine what Mews SHOULD have been traded for.
Cam Allen and Andrew Gibson were the two D-Men traded this offseason that were graduating players. So, if we, for argument sake, said Mews was a graduating player, we’d have those two trade to use as comparables. Since the deal woudl be to a contending team, Gibson brings more to the team for sure. Cam Allen? Fo him it comes down to more whether you value the defensive side or whether you need that PP QB. So, based on individual team needs, teams will slightly value these players differently BUT, the acquiring team for either knows what they want/need so their trade value should be same/similar.
Noah Jenkin and Nolan Jackson were the two players in these trades. Similar players. Actually, I would toss Kaleb Dietsch into that mix as well. All relatively similar valued. Maybe Noah Jenkin is slightly less valuable as a 4th round pick but he’s played well. So, it comes down to picks. Allen garnered two 2nds, two 3rd,s two 4ths, and a 5th. MEws was two 2nds, two 3rds, and a 5th (plus the mid-round conditional picks). I have reached out to someone to find out what the conditions are and if I get a response, I will post them. But, the conditions are based on him returning next year so if he is a graduating player, it won’t matter. This all means that Mews went for a slightly better D-Man and two 4th round picks less. A wash? Maybe. Close enough to suggest that he likely was traded “for about” what he was worth as a GRADUATING PLAYER.
I think, as you think, Mews will be back next year. I think this trade will look really bad when Sudbury moves him at the deadline for an ‘09 or at the start of the season for more picks than they gave to get him. But, if he does go to Michigan, Boyd will look like a genius and the deal isn’t awful. It is probably right about market value give or take. Either way, the 67’s lose in this scenario because they ended up with a player that could have been used to acquire Shane Wright to put the team over the top and give us another banner in the rafters but instead, he goes unceremoniously to Sudbury.
I think this highlights the inability of this organization to properly maximize the asset value or the players, whether it is the lack of ability to develop them, making deals at the most opportune times, and assigning loyalty in the wrong way that ends up being detrimental to the franchise.
Everything has an opportunity cost. I say it all the time. Being loyal to players is supposed to give you and advantage in recruiting. I am not sure in the 67’s case, that is working very well. Players that they did sign want out and those they haven’t signed don’t want to be here. I am not sure the loyalty approach is a viable approach. I think it presents as weakness and the players and agents are taking advantage.
