The Trade Period Begins Today

The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s holiday trading period begins today.

A number of rumoured deals are expected to be made official by the league. Deals will be posted on the QMJHL’s website throughout the day.

As has been the case for the past several years, the Saint John Sea Dogs haven’t been involved in many rumours circulating the interweb. The only deal – so far - involving the Sea Dogs that is expected to take place is sending a fifth-round pick to Rimouski in exchange for 17-year old centre Nicolas Hebert.

The Sea Dogs should be sellers - although they may not do much - once again this season as their rebuild continues. Unlike last year, they do not have many older players to trade that would bring back a solid return.

The biggest asset Saint John has is Sebastien Auger who has been one of the league’s best goaltenders this season. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your view of things) for the Dogs is that there appears to be a few other quality netminders on the market which likely drives down the return the Dogs could get.

But, Auger is a 19-year old so he will likely be in the league next year as an overager. It certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing to have Auger on the Sea Dogs next season, which is why Saint John probably shouldn’t trade the ‘tender unless they can get a quality return.

Should be an interesting couple weeks, especially with Ross Yates and Christian Vermette running things instead of Mike Kelly. We’ll see what happens.

The trade period ends on January 7th.

Photo: Marc Henwood/Station Nation