Moose Jaw Warriors general manager Alan Millar felt his team didn’t need a full-blown rebuild this WHL season. Midway through the season and Millar’s hunch is correct.
The Warriors are third in the East Division even though they’ve lost five of their top six forwards from their Scotty Monroe winning team from last year.
“You know when you’re anchored by guys like Josh Brook and Jet Woo, and you know you look in the summer we had three players at the National Junior camp … Our guys have had success the last few years and sometimes usually that spills over into the year,” Millar said.
With the trade deadline looming, Millar said the Warriors are in some talks, but it’ll be very unlikely they’ll pull off anything significant.
The Warriors highest pick in the 2019 bantam draft comes in the fourth round, having traded away their first, second and third round picks last season in trades for Kale Clague, Brandon Shouldhaus and Brayden Burke.
“We realize we’ve been aggressive the last number of years in trying to improve our team,” Millar said.
“And we understand that we are short some picks in the upcoming draft but we’re not going to make decisions with this year’s team just based on missing some draft picks.”
He added that last year there were 10 teams that were buyers, all confident they could make a run at the WHL title, but things are a lot different this season.
“This year the number of contenders is two or three, but there’s still 19 teams that are playing for something in terms of making the playoffs or being competitive come playoff time,” Millar said.
Based on a report by CTV Regina's Claire Hanna
