Days away from the start of the regular season, the London Knights have made a trade.
The Knights have sent defenceman, Nic Mattinen to the Flint Firebirds in exchange for two second round draft picks, a third round pick and a conditional third round pick.
London General Manager Rob Simpson says discussions began when the Firebirds ran into an injury issue.
“It was led a little bit by (Flint G.M.) Barclay Branch and some of his team needs. Denis Busby is injured and he has a younger D-Corps and some injuries back there. We had spoken about Nic Mattinen, but with where our (defence) corps was, we hadn’t started to consider it until very recently.”
It doesn’t take much to do the math on how things changed. Alec Regula joined the Knights two weeks ago and that gave London nine OHL defencemen on their roster. London also signed their fifth round pick from the 2017 OHL Priority Selection, Liam Whittaker, bringing the number of available D-men to ten.
Size will always be a factor in sports and at 6’4 and over 200 pounds, Mattinen has plenty, but other additions to the team outside of 6’4 Regula, such as Tim Fallowfield and Riley Coome have given London’s defence a major injection of height and weight. Simpson admits, that can soften the blow of parting with a player like Mattinen.
“You keep that in mind. When you are bringing in size like that, it definitely helps.”
Another factor in the trade was the return. It hasn’t been unusual for recent trades to have four draft picks, but this one takes on the look of a trade deadline deal.
Josh Brown of the Kitchener Record put some real perspective on it with a tweet posted shortly after the Knights’ announcement.
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The Rangers acquired two players and three second round picks in the deal for Bracco, another Maple Leafs’ prospect, that was made last January. Kitchener also traded an 8th rounder and a 13th rounder to the Spitfures in the deal.
Mattinen spent two full seasons with the Knights. He was originally a sixth round pick in 2014 and began playing with the team in the 2015-16 season. He was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. Mattinen attended training camp with the Leafs and was returned to the OHL on September 17.
The Ottawa native was part of the Memorial Cup championship team in 2016.
The Knights will open the regular season at on Friday, September 22 against the Windsor Spitfires. The puck drops just after 7:30. AM980’s coverage will begin at 6:30.
Comments