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The London Knights didn’t make any last-minute roster additions at Friday’s trade deadline, but the path remains clear to the Ontario Hockey League final.
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“Where we were at with our roster, there wasn’t anything that made sense for us,” London associate GM Rob Simpson said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with (high) prices. Sometimes, you can’t come to an agreement with teams on what a fair deal is. We already made moves earlier and we weren’t in a spot where we felt we had to do anything.
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“We’re comfortable with what we have here.”
The Knights were the first OHL team to reach 30 wins, reeled off a string of 19 straight victories and went 7-1-1 the past few weeks during a stretch where most or all of their five world junior players were out of the lineup.
Nobody in the Western Conference made a big splash to challenge London. Windsor is building for a run next year and Kitchener has overachieved after trading away 50-goal man Carson Rehkopf.
Barrie, Brampton, Oshawa and Kingston all bolstered their lineups to try to win the Eastern Conference.
“There was definitely more movement on the other side,” Simpson said. “There are a lot of good teams and if you look at the early indications of who everybody thought would be strong in the league, it was more in the east. I wasn’t surprised a lot of teams there made a push in to try to win.”
The Knights will welcome back their five world junior players to the lineup Friday against Windsor. The younger players can breathe easy that they will remain in London the rest of the season.
“The players are stressed leading into it,” Simpson said, “and once it’s done and you know this is our group, it takes some of the pressure and anxiety away.”
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