As someone who doesn’t know much about hockey, this may be a bit rough but I’m going to dive in and take a look at where the roster of the Kelowna Knights sat at the trade deadline when I joined the league. The team as a whole was sitting at 34-11-3 and they were looking like the best team in the league bar none. They led the league in scoring significantly with 27 points over the next closest team and their defense was stellar to boot, allowing the second least goals in the league. Only Newfoundland was better in that regard and the third place team had allowed 13 more goals. They were so dominant that their goal difference of 82 was the most in the league by a whopping 32 points. At this point in the season, the Knights looked like an absolute juggernaut that teams were struggling to even compete with. In fact it seemed like shootouts were the only reliable way to face this team down as 40 percent of their losses came in such situations. As for straight up on the ice? It just didn’t happen often.


How did they get there though? Let us start with Cian McFelter, their high scoring, high flying center. At this point in the season, he was the best scorer in the league with his 51 points. 33 assists and 18 goals of his own. With his plus minus of 27, this made him one of the most effective players in the entire league. He was backed mostly by right defender Robert Feltersnatch, right winger Gerry Atrick, and left winger Pavel Jeziak. Feltersnatch seemed to be a wizard at getting the puck to open players as in his 42 points, he pulled in 31 assists to just 11 of his own goals. He was one of the primary guys setting up McFelter and Atrick. Speaking of Atrick, he was sitting at 40 points himself with 18 of his own goals, tying McFelter, and 22 assists. Jeziak was sitting at 37 points, racking up 16 of his own and 21 assists. These guys were the stars of the show.


That said the team as a whole was performing at an electric level. Not only were all 4 of these players in the top 15 plus minus in the league, Kelowna as a whole had a whopping 11 players in the top 15 at this point of the season. These guys were joined by Richard LaFleur, Vlastislav Malik, Christopher Ford, A-Rye Izzy, Roboute Gouilliman, Mikhael Petrov, and Michael Scotch. With this many players playing at such a high level, it was no surprise that Kelowna looked like the team to beat. For the most part it seemed like incredible team effort across the board as all these players racked up massive assists. While they had a few team leaders in scoring, like Kou Saotome with his 19 goals, most of the team seemed incredible at creating passing lanes to set up each other as they absolutely racked up the assists. When you have a team playing this selflessly, it is really hard to find faults or weaknesses. This was evidenced by just how unstoppable Kelowna looked at the trade deadline. They seemed destined to win the Juniors and only time would tell if their story would play out that way.

Approved, +5 TPE for @WithTheMoose