The team has made some trades and is getting ready for this week’s MHL midget draft.
This year’s territorial pick for the Mariners is Yarmouth defenseman Kaleb Boudreau (son of Scotty and Deborah Boudreau of Melbourne) who played for Newbridge Academy last year. Over the weekend Boudreau was also a 12th round draft pick of the Victoriaville Tigres in the June 3 QMJHL draft.
When Boudreau was selected to play in the East Coast Elite League (ECEL) all-star game last season, he had told this newspaper, “I have been working very hard over the past year to improve my game defensively.” He said developing a faster skate was another thing he had been working on. Before Newbridge he had played major bantam with the Western Hurricanes.
“We’re happy to have him aboard,” Mariners head coach Laurie Barron said.
Mariners trades have also been made to complete a deal made in January that had brought forward Max Robitaille and defenseman Alex Mann to the Mariners. The Mariners have sent forwards Mateo Short, Mike Snow and Brodie Butt to the South Shore Lumberjacks. Short, a Mariners fan favourite, led the team in goals last season with 24. Coupled with assists, he ended the regular season with 42 points and earned another six points – five goals and an assist – in the playoffs. Snow also garnered a lot of points during the regular season with 13 goals and 18 assists.
About these trades Barron said, “That’s one of those trades where you hope that it helped us at the time. I guess the biggest reason we did it (then) was we owed the fans a chance to win and the thought was with bringing (Lawrence) Lyver and Mann and Robitaille that might put us over the bump.
“You gotta take a shot when you get a chance,” he said. “The other thing was we were pretty heavy on 1997s, you can only have so many 20 years old. So we’ll try to fill the void from these trades between the draft and free agents.”
The midget draft will be held June 8-10 in Miramichi, with league meetings the first couple of days and the draft itself happening on June 10. The Mariners previously traded their first round pick to pick up players last season. The Mariners first pick in this draft will be in the third round. The Mariners also have two fourth round, a fifth round, three seventh round and an eight round pick.
The Mariners also recently announced that they had acquired the rights to forward Ilya Putintsev, a former Halifax Moosehead, from the Valley Wildcats.
