Braves on the hunt - Recorder & Times
Recorder & Times By Jonathon Brodie
Sunday's CCHL trade deadline is nearing and it might be no surprise what exactly the Brockville Braves are on the hunt for.
"A high-end forward," said Braves owner/general manager/head coach Dustin Traylen.
Traylen didn't elaborate much further, but added things had picked up Wednesday after a fairly quiet time leading up to the busy hours.
A "high-end forward" would only add some more solid depth to Brockville and most likely bring a scoring touch to the team's third and fourth lines, which would be a huge help for the Robinson Division's lowest scoring club.
It could be interesting to see which top-six forward would get shifted to the bottom six or if the new player would get placed on a lower line.
Traylen has definitely established a defence-first mindset among his players and it has paid offwith the Braves giving up the least amount of goals per game in the entire league, but the question has always been if Brockville would be able keep pace with the point pile ups of Carleton Place Canadians (4.3 goals per game), Cumberland Grads (4.2) or Smiths Falls Bear (3.7) in a seven-game series.
A 3-o win over the No. 1 ranked Canadians on Friday at the Memorial Centre might make things a little harder for Traylen to pull the trigger on a trade because if someone new comes in then someone on the team now will most likely be going out.
Braves goalie Henry Johnson earned his eighth shutout in Friday's game to tie the single-season CCHL shutout record…and there is still 23 games left this year.
The Braves might not have scored much Friday, but they didn't have to in order to win.
Since the Dec. 1 card-reduction deadline - a time when the Braves stayed quiet - Traylen has contested he won't trade any parts for the sake of moving pieces.
The owner has openly stated he is confident in his team to make a push come playoff time. It's tough to argue against that when Brockville is currently holding the second-best winning percentage in the league.
A team in second-place or better has ... Read More
