The Barrie Lakeshores and rebuilding through the Midget Draft

When you lack a deep minor association to draw from, your team can be perpetually behind the pack in chasing down a playoff spot in the toughest Junior league in Canada. Teams like Peterborough, Whitby and Six Nations are usually top level Junior A teams because they can add 3-5 players every year to their roster from a pool of home grown talent.

Conventional wisdom was that the Midget Draft added little value to these centres and was not a means to find competitiveness in Junior A lacrosse. Teams like Mississauga and the Beaches struggle because they cannot find depth and value within their home centres and are constantly churning rosters of out of town players in the search for a competitive team.

The Barrie Lakeshores certainly fall into this category when you look at their past but they seem to be poised to turn conventional wisdom on its head by using the Midget Draft to rebuild. Here is how they did it.

In 2010, the Lakeshores were halfway through another playoff-free season when they dealt last year goalie Brandon Noble to the Burlington Chiefs for 3 spare parts and a first round pick in 2011. Noble helped the Chiefs win their opening round series over St. Catharines but they were promptly dispatched by the Orangeville Northmen in a second round sweep. The “spare parts” of Travis Hallyburton, Dave Mazurek and Mike Mazurek all were non-factors in Barrie with the Mazurek brothers never suiting up for a single game. That draft pick? It ended up being 7^th overall and the Lakeshores drafted Austin Murphy. The Lakeshores used their own pick that year to draft Daniel Craig, third overall.

In 2011 the Lakeshores took it a step further. They worked a deal with Mississauga prior to the draft to send the 6^th overall and 15^th overall pick in 2011 to Mississauga in exchange for the 13^th overall pick in 2011 and Mississauga’s first round pick in 2012. Mississauga selected John St. John with the 6^th pick and then dealt him to Brampton at the deadline as part of a larger trade. Barrie selected Kevin Conroy with the 13^th pick and he has yet to be a factor. The 2012 first round pick however ended up being the first overall pick which Barrie used to select Garrett Lewis. The 15^th overall selection (Kenzie Smith) they gave up was eventually flipped back to Barrie for a 2013 second round pick.

Later that year they moved Shane Cater to Six Nations for Akwesasne’s first round pick in 2012. That pick ended up being 5^th overall and they drafted Cam Shilling. In the order of a few short months, the Lakeshores had acquired the 2012 1^st and 5^th overall picks to compliment their 3^rd overall choice. To accomplish this, they gave up one player from their 2011 roster!

For all this wheeling and dealing, the Lakeshores have ended up with the following players; Austin Murphy, Garrett Lewis and Cam Shilling to join their own picks of Daniel Craig and Joel Tinney. Most importantly all 5 of these draft picks have suited up regularly for Barrie and have combined for 252 points in just 107 games. With Murphy and Craig heading into their third years and Lewis, Tinney and Shilling now past their rookie years, could Barrie be ripe for a jump into a playoff position in 2013?

Appendix

Barrie Draft Picks Since 2011

Year	Rd	Pick	Player	GP	G	A	Pts	PPG	PIM
2011	1	3	Daniel Craig	32	34	43	77	2.41	22
2011	1	7	Austin Murphy	41	28	75	103	2.51	27
2011	2	13	Kevin Conroy	1	0	0	0	0.00	0
2012	1	1	Garrett Lewis	7	7	12	19	2.71	2
2012	1	3	Joel Tinney	11	15	18	33	3.00	4
2012	1	5	Cameron Shilling	16	5	15	20	1.25	4
2012	2	19	Markell Nelson	18	1	4	5	0.28	51