Chiefs deal selves strong hand

In the Western Hockey League, the ideal is not just the trade that helps both teams but both players, too. After all, there are consciences to be salved when you’re bartering teenagers.

So every general manager hopes there’s a soft landing for his departing guy – a better opportunity, or at least a friendly face on the new club.

In November 2002, Spokane Chiefs general manager Tim Speltz called right winger Matt Keith into the office and broke the news that he’d been traded to Red Deer. Keith was going to a team headed for the WHL finals, but he had also played in 153 games with the Chiefs and made all the ties that bind.

“Geez, Red Deer,” Keith said. “I don’t even know anybody on that team. Wait, I know Doug Lynch.”

At which point Speltz had to spill it: the player Keith had been traded for was, yes, Doug Lynch.

Justin McCrae and Trevor Glass made out a little better last week. Obtained by Spokane in separate deals with Saskatoon and Medicine Hat, the two 19-year-olds didn’t just have a new start on a team with the best record in the league.

They had each other.

They share the same hometown – Cochrane, Alberta, just outside Calgary – and work out together during the summers.

“Hockey,” said Speltz, “is such a small world.”

It’s certainly a small world during the rodeo that is the WHL’s trading deadline. In the 10-day period between New Year’s and Thursday, 22 trades sent 42 players across three time zones and impacted the lives of 20 adolescent future draft picks in ways they’ll never realize. It’s also a big lottery. The give-and-take might deliver a Memorial Cup to the shrewd dealer – unless he outsmarts himself with one move too many.

So is Speltz sleeping better or worse after his big week?

“Both, I think,” he said, betraying a smile.

But mostly better. Spokane has been the WHL’s stingiest defense but is also perhaps the youngest, with Justin Falk the only 19-year-old on the back line. To this group Speltz was able to add Glass, who has more postseason exposure – 42 games – than the four youngest Chiefs defensemen together had in regular-season experience before the season. In McCrae, Spokane landed another four-year veteran, Saskatoon’s captain, one of those treasured team-firsters with enough skill to play on the first line, as he did Saturday in the absence of Spokane captain Chris Bruton.

And it was done at a more-than-reasonable price – the Chiefs losing just one player off its current roster, forward Chris Langkow, who wasn’t going to crack Spokane’s top two lines this year.

Speltz wasn’t as frantic as some of his colleagues. Regina, leader of the East Division, somehow managed to have 11 players change uniforms – trading an NHL first-rounder, Nick Ross – plus assorted bantam draft picks. But Speltz was, to the astonishment of some, considerably more active than Tri-City’s Bob Tory, casually known around the league as “Trader Bob.” Other than picking up an import, Radek Meidl, discarded last year by Seattle, Tory made no deadline deals.

“We’re not going to overpay for players,” he insisted. “We traded for Jason Reese early in the season. The other trades in our opinion were too expensive.”

If Saturday’s shootout loss to the Americans in the Spokane Arena was supposed to be a referendum on their different approaches, it settled little – other than that the Ams remain Spokane’s toughest out, deals or no deals. The Chiefs have lost five times to the Ams this year, a riddle they’d better solve.

So the question remains whether Speltz did enough to keep the Chiefs as well-equipped as the half-dozen other title contenders.

“I think so,” he said. “There weren’t any other deals out there that made sense for us.”

Not that there weren’t other deals. Not surprisingly, Speltz got feelers for his tandem of Kevin Armstrong and Dustin Tokarski, currently Nos. 1 and 3 among WHL goaltenders.

“It was interesting – we got a lot of calls about them, but they were all calls about the future (younger players),” Speltz said. “In neither case were they good spots for the goalies and the second thing was, if we’re making moves to improve this year’s team, why would we do anything to take away from this year’s team? This combination thing might not be conventional, but it’s flat-out working.”

Likewise, Speltz wasn’t willing to cut deeply into his corps of 18-year-olds because as much as the Chiefs appear poised to make a run at it all this year, they’re likely to do it again next year – especially since both of last week’s acquisitions could potentially return as 20-year-olds and give Spokane a stronger group of those than what they might have had. The fact is, Speltz didn’t have to hold back on any major trades because the two he wanted to do most weren’t especially expensive.

“There are some years your guys say, ‘You didn’t do enough for us – all we needed was a couple of guys and we’re right there,’ ” Speltz said. “I think we are right there.

“We had a chance before,” Speltz said. “This gives us a better chance.”

And now it’s up to the Chiefs to make the most of that chance.