The Orlando Mounties made a huge trade the day. Finally ending a full year of speculation. The Mounties have traded beloved captain, John Tavares to the Stuggart Bisons for a 1st round pick and Pavel Mintyukov. Tavares has spent the last 11 seasons of his career as captain of the Mounties after he arrrived via trade from the Mississauga Knights. There was immediate pressure on Tavares to help the Mounties and new GM (at the time) John Salerno capure a UHL cup. That was never meant to be as the Mounties were bounced in the first round or missed the playoffs 10 out of the 11 year of the captains tenure. Even with the lack of team success the fanbase never turned on Tavares.
GM John Salerno said it was time the Mounties made a radical change to try to reset the team. They now have a young D core of Cale Makar, Pavel Minyukov and Thomas Harley. After years of trying to build around forwards up front, Orlando is now taking a defensive approach and hope that the offense will flow from the blueline. Orlando still boasts talented forwards up front such as Rikko Rantanen, JT Compher, Vincent Trocheck and Tomas Hertl.
"I'm in shock to be quite frank" said Cale Makar. "John has been here for my entire career, it will be weird not to have him in the locker room with us anymore".
There is now a leadership void that only time will tell who will step up to fill. "I think its on all us to pull together and lead as a group. It's not going to be just one player. No one can replace a guy like him (Tavares)" opined Mikko Rantanen.
For his time in Orlando, John Taveres played in 738 games while scoring 295 goals and 421 assists. He was almost a point a game player.
We with nothing but the best for John in Stuggart. Hopefully he can win his championship and make the best use of possible of the assets we aquired. Orlando now has 5 picks in the first 3 rounds in next years draft.