By Earl Seitz / Chad Klassen

Draft leftovers: hometown pressure, the trade and U-18s

May 4, 2018 | 4:28 PM

KAMLOOPS —   “I think it’s always special to have a local player – the fans can really relate,” says Blazers head coach Don Hay. “Sometimes there are going to be challenges. Everybody knows who you are, and everybody has high expectations. But when you have high expectations, that means you’re a pretty good player.”

Don Hay doesn’t expect it to be a major challenge for Logan Stankoven. As a skilled player through minor hockey in Kamloops, he’s already lived in a fish bowl. Hay sees it as a positive, and says they’ll work to bring Stankoven along the best they can and put him into situations where he is going to have success.

The Blazers also made a couple of trades on draft day. One sending four year veteran Quinn Benjafield to the Edmonton Oil Kings for 19 year old forward  Kobe Mohr. Benjafield would have come back as an overage player next season, and is another story of becoming a victim of numbers, with teams only allowed three 20 year olds on their roster.

 “I really enjoyed Quinn’s time here,” says Hay. “He’s a smart player, he showed improvement every year – but we feel with Jermaine Loewen, Luc Smith and Dylan Ferguson, those will be three real good quality 20 year olds to have come back. We didn’t want to get shutout in trying to move a 20 year old later. Some years there are a lot of 20 year olds and some years there aren’t that many 20 year olds available. This year there will be more 20 year olds out there available to be traded.”

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Don Hay just returned earlier this week from coaching Canada at the Under-18 World Hockey Championship in Russia.  After going through the preliminary round undefeated, Canada had to come home without what the team went for.

 “Walking away from it really disappointing that we did’nt come away with a medal,” says Hay, “We beat every team in the tournament. We beat Finland that went on to win the gold medal, we beat the U.S. that played for the gold medal, they won silver, we beat Sweden that won the bronze. We were 6-and-0.   The game you can’t afford to lose is the quarter-final game, and that’s the game we lost. We picked a bad day to have a bad day — it just shows you how important that quarter final day is.”