Stan Butler, Battalion Head Coach and Director of Hockey Operations, confirmed Wednesday afternoon that North Bay native Brady Lyle has requested a trade.
Butler says the 2015 1st round selection is no longer with the team and is at home awaiting a trade.
"He's concerned about his ice time and how he was being used so at this time right now we are trying to accommodate that request as well as upgrade our team and accommodate Brady's request," stated Butler.
The Battalion, who are 0-4-2 in their past six games, will continue to move forward utilizing 7 defencemen.
Lyle, left North Bay to play minor hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary's (Minnesota) Prep School in his Major Bantam and Minor Midget season.
He was invited to the Anaheim Ducks main camp in September and had two goals in nine games with the Troops this season.
Butler says Lyle's absence should create an opportunity for some of his young defenders.
"This is going to give Travis Mailhot and Simon Rose more opportunity and hopefully get Payton Vescio up a little bit more and get his games in here so and hopefully we can accommodate our trade request from Brady for a good front line player for us in one of the other three positions on the team," said Butler.
Battalion captain Riley Bruce would not elaborate on whether he was surprised to get the news that Lyle wanted a trade.
"I’m not going to comment on that type of stuff right now,” he bluntly stated.
"We just have to keep communicating as a team and make sure everyone is sticking together and everyone has the right mindset going into practice and going into the games this weekend. It’s obviously a weird situation but we just have to move forward and have a good practice today.”
Battalion goaltender Julian Sime says the team needs to get past the Lyle trade request quickly.
“We try not to think about it too much, we are really close in the room and obviously we are going to miss Lyle he’s a great competitor and a great guy in the dressing room but as of right now we’ve got to really focus on moving forward and if that is going to be without him then that is what we need to work on,” said Sime.
