T-Birds add three new players in advance of Sunday’s trade deadline

Trade-deadline week has seen a series of dominoes fall for the Seattle Thunderbirds, who made two moves on Monday and then a blockbuster Tuesday to acquire 20-year-old goaltender Landon Bow.

As a team with high expectations and a number of supremely talented players, it was clear that the Thunderbirds would be buyers at the trade deadline. Which positions exactly they’d try to shore up and how they would do so remained the bigger questions.

It started Monday afternoon with the acquisition of Cavin Leth, a 19-year-old forward who had spent his first two-plus seasons with the Swift Current Broncos. In acquiring Leth, Seattle surrendered 17-year-old defenseman Sahvan Khaira, a once highly-touted prospect who sought more playing time in an effort to realize his full potential.

“(Khaira) thought he should have been playing more and it was going to be hard to do on our team,” said Thunderbirds general manager Russ Farwell. “It was a move that addressed something that wasn’t going to change a great deal this year. For our team, this year, it was something we could afford to do and I think it makes us a better team.”

With the departure of Khaira it became clear that Seattle wasn’t done. The T-Birds only had six defensemen on the roster at that point, and one of them was 16-year-old Jarret Tyszka, who is shelved for at least the next month with a hand injury suffered during the holiday break.

The question was answered just 30 minutes later when Seattle announced the acquisition of Bryan Allbee from the Kootenay Ice. Allbee, 18, is in his second WHL season and had 10 points in 40 games before coming to Seattle. In return, the Thunderbirds sent a 2017 fifth round draft pick Kootenay’s way – a small price to pay for a player who fills an immediate need.

“Allbee is an experienced guy who was on a team that was struggling this year,” said Farwell. “He had a lot of power play time there and will improve the overall depth of our defense.”

By Monday night, some were left scratching their heads. Seattle had added a 19-year-old forward in Leth and an 18-year-old defenseman in Allbee, and shipped out a draft pick and a defenseman who they still believe had a good deal of untapped potential. Two veterans were incoming, but it appeared Leth was being added to a deep forward group that is welcoming the return of their top three centers from the World Junior Championships, and Allbee seemed to simply be a replacement for Khaira.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, and all the pieces came together. The Thunderbirds announced a blockbuster trade, sending 20-year-old wing Jamal Watson, 18-year-old goalie Taz Burman, and a conditional second round draft choice to the Swift Current Broncos in exchange for Bow.

Bow was one of few veteran goalies available and has posted impressive numbers in his three WHL seasons. His save percentage has stayed over .900 all three of those seasons and has climbed each year, including this season on a team that is currently sitting eleventh out of twelve Eastern Conference teams.

“He’s got real respectable numbers and his save percentage is right up there with the best guys,” said Farwell of his new goaltender. “He’s won some games on his own and gave (Swift Current) a chance to win all the time. Every time he plays he’s going to put us on even footing with any goaltender in our conference. We’ve got a pretty good group but we just didn’t feel we were on the same level some nights in goal.”

“We expect Bow to jump in and play right away,” continued Farwell. “(Logan) Flodell has proven himself and he’s played pretty well lately. We’re not afraid to play him at all. Together, the two of them give us real good goaltending. I do think it’s an improvement for our team and I think he will give us a chance to win every night.”

Trading Watson meant there would be a gap in the forward ranks, explaining the acquisition of Leth the day before.

“We didn’t feel we were deep enough to trade Watson without adding a forward so that was a key part of things for us,” explained Farwell. “He gives us another legitimate guy who plays all three positions and kills penalties. He’s played up and down the lineup and played on the first line for a while when (Swift Current) had some guys hurt.”

Watson, whose point totals perhaps haven’t reached the level we expected after a superb training camp, was a difficult piece to part with.

“Watson was a difficult guy to trade,” admitted Farwell. “He’s a real quality guy and was a good contributor who played in all situations and never complained at all. He had a bit of a slow start goal-scoring wise and then the scare with his knee injury.”

The sentiment may have been a bit different for Burman, whose 7-4-0-0 record looked good on paper, but .877 save percentage and 3.20 goals against average were disappointing to say the least. Like Watson, Burman was only acquired this past offseason and was expected to offer more in net. Along with Flodell, Burman was expected to compete for playing time, which would push both goalies to perform at their highest level, but that wasn’t necessarily the case.

“I think it’s a fair comment (that expectations were not lived up to),” said Farwell of Burman’s first-half performance. “I think we were hoping for a little bit more in goal.”

It seemed a likely scenario that Seattle would look to shore up their backend one way or another, whether that meant adding a veteran defenseman or an experienced goalie. The Thunderbirds ultimately did both, but the biggest movement obviously came in net, where the overage Bow was a coveted player around the league and one of few upper-echelon goaltenders who might be available.

“If we only had one possibility and thought, ‘what should we do?’, we thought the biggest improvement we could make was adding a real quality goaltender,” said Farwell when asked what their primary focus was heading into the deadline. “Of course you want to improve as much as you can in other places, but we thought in goal was the best way to improve our chances. The other moves (for Leth and Allbee) fed off of that and we didn’t feel we were deep enough without adding another forward, so one thing led to another.”

Seattle made three additional moves over the past two months to shore up the depth on their lower lines and it’s clear now that Seattle is focused on making a deep run this season. The first of those trades was in early November for Owen Seidel. Seattle followed up nearly a month later by acquiring Josh Uhrich, and then acquired import forward Andreas Schumacher shortly after, releasing Gustav Olhaver, a Colorado Avalanche draft pick who had yet to find his way in Seattle.

“It’s been hard the last month to get a real read on our team because we lost three centers and every line had to change,” said Farwell, referring to his top three centers all missing approximately a month of games to play in the World Junior Championships in Finland. “I think a little more grit and depth was necessary. (Schumacher) is a year older (than Olhaver) and has given us way more of a contribution. He’s ahead of Olhaver developmentally and has contributed more to us, so that was a good addition. Each of them has given us a little more and if we can get everyone on the same page and playing the same style, it’s a good fit for us.”

So, the lingering question still remains – with four days until the trade deadline, is Seattle finished?

“I don’t know how much more there will be,” said Farwell about the prospect of making further deals. “There’s a couple days left before the deadline but we thought it was important to get it done now because I just don’t know how much more movement there’s going to be. There are very few teams selling this year and the price of anyone you acquire from now on is going to be pretty high.”

Whether Seattle makes another move or not, which seems unlikely at this point, this looks like a deep group so long as the new acquisitions and the incumbents live up to expectations. The returns of Mathew Barzal, Scott Eansor, and Alexander True in the middle will get this team back to the way they were playing before their departure in December.

When Seattle hosts Portland Friday night, it’s going to be a very different team than the one that fell 4-2 to Tri-City last Saturday. Including the World Junior returnees and the three new acquisitions, a total of six faces will be taking the ice for Seattle. It will be a fascinating prospect to see if this team is able to develop the chemistry required of a champion quickly and immediately start picking up points in the standings.

“This gives us a fighting chance to compete and take a run at things,” said Farwell in conclusion. “If we won’t do anything else (before the deadline) we won’t be disappointed. I think we’ll be involved until the end. It’s taken a little while, but the answer is yes, we feel good about our team at this point.There aren’t many teams that could pull three centers out of their lineup and roll along, so yes, the last month has been difficult. You learn about everybody at that point when you face some adversity. We have to put our team back together and get going.”