The Calvary Has Arrived:
For the 3rd year in a row, the Orlando Mounties have been busy as the trade deadline approaches. Two years ago they made a huge move to acquire Sidney Crosby, a move many fans have grown to that trade "the acquisition for the LVP (Least Valuable Player). Last year Orlando made moves at the deadline to acquire Marc Staal, Roman Polak, Ben Bishop and Ryan Getzlaf. Orlando missed the playoffs anyway depite those moves. Will 3rd time be the charm? Will Orlando finally acheive any sort of playoff success? They have a mighty task in front of them. If the season was to end today Orlando would match up the Cologne Hellcats.
Owner/GM John Salerno identified 2 areas he wanted improvement in: a forward to help the bottom 6 be more productive and beed up the blueline defensively. They had already addressed an issue with top 6 talent earlier in the year with trades for Jonathan Toews and Jakub Voracheck.
Orlando traded for Derrick Brassard from Vancouver for Austin Watson and a 2022 3rd round pick. "Derrick hopefully will fit our need for 3rd line scoring, which has been a problem for us most of the year" Salerno said. "He will center our 3rd line and play RW on the 2nd powerplay unit".
Orlando also brought in Jason Zucker from a trade with Lethbridge. They traded a prospect and a 6th round pick this year for Zucker. "As I said, I wanted to improve our scoring from our bottom 6 forwards, who have quite frankly, been disappointing this year" Salerno said. He continued, "Zucker shouild fit in well on the 3rd line with Brassard and hopefully we can get that line going as the playoff push is in full force"
The Mounties also made 2 trades to beef up their blueline yesterday. Even though Orlando ranks 10th in goals allowed, Salerno saw there were some issues, especially w/ the bottom 3 dmen. "I haven't been too happy with how we have played defensively lately so I shook things up" the owner/GM said. Orlando sent down Jason Tinordi and Kevin Gravel down to the Oh Snaps and has benched Mark Borowieki and Roman Polak. Orlando traded for Brenden Dillon from Calgary in exchange for a prospect and then acquired Zdeno Chara and a 3rd round pick from Lansing for a 2nd round pick.
Will all of these moves finally bring the long suffering Orlando fans success? What happens if its another year that ends in failure. We posed that question to Salerno and here is what he said. "It would really suck if we flame out again. Changes will be made obviously, but the best part about my position? I"m the owner so I'm not going to fire myself as GM!"