Deadline gives three vets new life in Edmonton

Edmonton, AB -The Rush opened their door to three new players earlier in the week as the club made changes before the trade and free-agent signing deadline.

With six games remaining in the 2011 regular season, Edmonton continued to revamp its roster as the club brought in defender Kyle Sweeney, goaltender Rob Blasdell and forward Mike McLellan as three others made their exits from Rushland.

The new faces will be in Edmonton's lineup this weekend as Edmonton (2-8) and Calgary (7-3) are the lone matchup in Week 11 of National Lacrosse League play as the Rush looks to take one game of the four game series against their provincial rivals Saturday at Scotiabank Saddledome to wrap up the Battle of Alberta. The Roughnecks have taken all three previous tilts with two of the games decided by only one goal.

While the battle usually takes centre stage for both clubs, Derek Keenan and the Rush organization spent the last few days defending the latest transactions including former Rush forward Gavin Prout going back to Colorado.

"I guess the impression would be that we're bailing on this season, but I don't look at that at all," said the Rush head coach and GM. "We're getting a guy in Mike McLellan who has scored 27-goals per season in his career, which is a very good number. We're filling a need that I really felt that we had to with a bit more of an inside finisher.

"Gavin was not having a great year. You could say he was our leading scorer, but he only had 37 points," added Keenan. "The other part of it too is he's an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season and for us to franchise him again probably was not going to happen, so we'd lose him."

Keenan's lineup changes also saw veteran defender Bruce Murray and goalie Brandon Atherton sent packing and Sweeney and Blasdell take their respective places.

Sweeney, 29, was signed off waivers from Philadelphia and the former college teammate of Brodie Merrill is expected to bring more athleticism and scoring to the defense and he's also expected to collect loose balls.

"He's a very good defender," said Keenan of the seven-year veteran. "He's able to push the ball up the floor and has put up scoring numbers in the past. Just another move to become more athletic in our backend and just to be able to push the tempo a little more defensively and offensively and he's going to bring that.

"He's a solid player. We're really happy to have him and quite surprised actually when he became available. And we jumped on that right away," Keenan added on Sweeney who has 93 points and 619 loose balls in 99 regular season games.

The other area getting a facelift is the backup goaltender position previously handled by Atherton as Blasdell now gives Edmonton a veteran tandem between the pipes.

"It was really simple," said Keenan of his goalie decision. "We just weren't getting anything out of that role unfortunately with Brandon. He did a pretty good job for us last year coming off the bench on a couple of occasions, but, this year it just wasn't there for him.

"With Blasdell, we're getting a veteran guy who's also a capable starter," Keenan said of the 14-year veteran with a career record of 66-45. "Obviously, he's about a 10-year starter in this league, so he's more veteran and more experienced and we just felt that him being available at no cost for us really as we didn't have to give up anything to get him that we decided to make that move."

The McLellan deal continue to be the biggest transaction as the incoming right-hander has big shoes to fill in the departing Prout in terms replacing a big-name player and contributing offensively with Edmonton.

McLellan, in his fifth full NLL campaign, brings a different style of play to the Rush forwards as he's more adept at going hard to the net, willing to cut into the middle and give Edmonton an inside presence.

"He's a real good inside finisher," said Keenan of McLellan who has four consecutive 20-plus-goal seasons. "He'll score most of his goals one-foot away from the front of the crease and we kind of need that.

"We think we have a pretty good perimeter presence, but we needed a guy inside and when he became available through this Prout trade, we were real happy to bring him in as well."

Edmonton also received a first-round pick from Colorado and Keenan expects an extremely talented player to be available in the upcoming draft to build on for the future.

"We're going to get a really good young player in probably the deepest and most talented draft this league has ever seen in 2011," he said.

"This made sense for now. The key to understand here is we're not bailing on this year," he said. "We still have a very good team and we've made a lot of acquisitions recently to get us into the playoffs, McLellan included, so we're going to move forward here and do our best to get in this season."

By Bruce Rakoczy