Greyhounds close to deal as deadline passes, pleased with additions

With three deals completed in the days leading up to Wednesday’s trade deadline, Soo Greyhounds general manager Kyle Raftis was close to getting an additional deal in under the wire in the hours leading up to the noon deadline.

In the end, time ran out on the potential deal, one that Raftis said “wasn’t going to be a bigtime move, but an area that we were still looking around at.”

“It wasn’t anything that was dramatically going to change the lineup or anything like that,” Raftis added.

It could be said that the moves that have a chance to dramatically change the lineup came days earlier when the Greyhounds announced a pair of trades over the weekend.

On Sunday, the team completed a pair of deals, one with the Flint Firebirds and the other with the Barrie Colts.

In the initial deal, the Greyhounds acquired skilled forward Gavin Hayes from the Firebirds in a deal that sent forwards Alex Kostov, Connor Clattenburg and four draft picks.

Shortly after announcing the deal with the Firebirds, the Greyhounds announced a second deal that saw the team add overage forward Jacob Frasca from the Barrie Colts along with a draft pick in exchange for overage forward Brenden Sirizzotti and three picks.

On Tuesday, the team added some depth with the acquisition of forward Justin DeZoete from the Guelph Storm in exchange for a draft pick.

Raftis said that the Greyhounds lineup heading into a pair of weekend home games was going to look “dramatically different” regardless of the trades with the return of forward Owen Allard and defenceman Arttu Karki from appearances at the World Juniors.

The team is also inching closer to a return to the lineup by forward Bryce McConnell-Barker.

“There was going to be some changes (to the lineup) and adding those three forwards is going to give us an opportunity to play with some different combos,” Raftis said. “For us, the most important thing was obviously wanting to upgrade our lineup, but at the same time find good people who fit well with our room. That’s what’s put us in this situation.”

Asked about McConnell-Barker’s impending return, Raftis said the Greyhounds captain is “really close.”

“Sometimes, depending on what your injury is, if it’s a shoulder or something else, we could probably push through, but we’re trying to look at the long game with it,” Raftis said.

With the return of McConnell-Barker and the additions through trades in recent days, Raftis said the coming stretch will see the team working on seeing where players fit through the lineup with three new faces in the lineup.

“For us, it’s more about finding that chemistry of who works well together,” Raftis said. “All three (trade acquisitions) have the skillset to do what we do well. We wanted to improve the lineup, but we didn’t want to change what we do really well. You don’t want to just throw different pieces in because it looks good at the deadline.”

Raftis also said that the opportunity to deal fewer draft picks in the 2024 OHL draft as well as maintaining some of the Greyhounds' youngest assets was important heading into the deadline.

Excited about the 2007 birth year group, which includes current Greyhounds forward Brady Martin and Travis Hayes, Raftis said the team did what it could to keep the young group intact while also being aggressive on the trade market.

“Being able to push those (traded) picks down the road and protect a lot of what we consider our young core, but at the same time not sacrificing adding older players or sitting tight with our group, it was something that we toyed with,” Raftis said. “You want to add to the group as much as you can and still be aggressive, which is something I said I was going to try to do.”