Former Vancouver Giants standout Cameron Schmidt was involved in a second blockbuster trade in four months on Wednesday, and he is now in line to face his former Giants mates twice as much next year.
The Seattle Thunderbirds announced ahead of Wednesday's WHL Draft that they had dealt Schmidt, the speedy winger who potted a league-best 51 goals this past season with Vancouver and Seattle, to the Victoria Royals for the No. 7 overall selection and a 2028 fourth rounder.
The WHL has not yet published its 2026-27 schedule, but the Giants have faced their B.C. Division rival Royals eight times in each of the past three campaigns. Their season series over that same span with the U.S. Division's Thunderbirds has featured four games.
Schmidt had two goals and four points in three games versus the Giants last season. He finished third in league scoring with 100 points in 72 games. He was fifth in regular season goals all-time for Vancouver, with his 99 tallies in 162 games.
Schmidt, 19, is a Dallas Stars prospect and the Royals have a Stars tie in bench boss James Patrick, who is a former Dallas assistant coach.
A struggling Vancouver side dealt Schmidt to Seattle on Jan. 5, looking to retool on the fly at the trade deadline. The Giants received defenceman Kaleb Hartmann, 18, as well five draft picks, including the No. 16 choice on Wednesday. Vancouver included that selection in a package they sent to the Spokane Chiefs to acquire winger Mathis Preston, 17, in another trade announced Jan. 5.
Meanwhile, the Giants completed a blockbuster trade of their own ahead of the selection process on Wednesday, flipping the No. 2 overall choice to the Wenatchee Wild for the No. 3 overall pick, a 2027 second rounder, a 2028 second and a 2030 first.
Vancouver, who finished this season with the league's third-worst record at 25-39-2-2, also owned the No. 4 pick Wednesday.
That No. 2 choice was originally Wenatchee's, and went Vancouver in a 2023 trade deadline involving Giants forward Zack Ostapchuk. The No. 3 choice had belonged the Swift Current Broncos.
Wenatchee was rumoured to have made a trade pitch for the Kelowna Rockets' No. 1 selection. Kelowna won the draft lottery with a choice they had acquired in a deal with the Lethbridge Hurricanes and opted to keep it, picking centre Madden Daneault, who celebrated his 15th birthday Thursday, from the Under-15 Red Deer Rebels. The 5-foot-10, 168-pound Daneault put up 65 goals and 149 points in 34 regular season games this year.
The Wild then selected forward Parker McMillan, 14, a 6-foot-2, 181 pounder from the Under-15 Yale Lions. He had 41 goals and 91 points in 25 regular season games.
With their back-to-back selections, Vancouver nabbed defenceman Eli Vickers, 14, from the Under-15 Delta Hockey Academy, and then centre Brayden Jugnauth, 15, from the Under-18 Okanagan Rockets.
The 5-foot-9, 154-pound Vickers accounted for 22 goals and 62 points in 30 regular season games. The 5-foot-10, 154-pound Jugnauth notched 32 goals and 58 points in 34 regular season games.
Players can't become full-time regulars for a 68-game regular season in the WHL until their 16-year-old campaign. The standard rule is that they are eligible for 10 games as an affiliate the year after their draft. Jugnauth, who celebrated his birthday last month, is one of the players in this draft class with an exception. He is eligible for 34 games of the action with Vancouver since he played at the Under-18 level this year.
The Giants made a similar swap at the 2016 draft, shipping the No. 2, No. 50 and No. 147 picks to the Saskatoon Blades for the No. 3, No. 36, No. 113 and a 2017 seventh rounder. Vancouver picked defenceman Bowen Byram with that first rounder, and he led Vancouver to the league championship series in 2019. The No. 36 pick was centre Lukas Svejkovsky and he had four goals and 13 points in that playoff run.
Saskatoon's top pick that year was centre Kirby Dach.
The Giants currently don't have a general manager or a coach. They announced on April 13 that Hnat Domenichelli had stepped down as GM after one season, and the following day they fired bench boss Parker Burgess after a single year at the helm.
A group of staff led by assistant general manager Pete Toigo brokered the deal with Wenatchee.
Various league sources have the Giants trying to land former coach Michael Dyck to fill the roles left vacant by Domenichelli and Burgess. Dyck ended a five-year stint running the Giants' bench after the 2022-23 season to become an assistant with the Toronto Marlies, the AHL farm club of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He is in his third campaign on the Marlies staff and they are currently knotted 2-2 with the Laval Rocket in the best-of-five second round of the Calder Cup playoffs. The deciding game of that set is Saturday in Laval.
The Maple Leafs fired GM Brad Treliving in March, and it's believed the club will undergo sweeping staff changes this summer. John Chayka was hired as Treliving's successor this week.
Dyck guided the Giants to that 2019 championship series, where they lost in Game 7 in overtime to the Prince Albert Raiders. They have won a single playoff round the past five seasons.
