The first place Moose Jaw Warriors put an exclamation point on the WHL Trade Deadline on Wednesday.

Just after the 4 p.m deadline, the Warriors announced a trade with the Brandon Wheat Kings to acquire Los Angeles Kings prospect and Team Canada member Kale Clague.

Going to the Wheat Kings in the deal were 17-year-old forward Luka Burzan, 18-year-old defenceman Chase Hartje, first round picks in 2019 and 2021, as well as a second round pick in 2018.

“He’s arguably the best defenceman in the Western Hockey League today,” said Warriors general manager Alan Millar after the trade. “He has 47 points in 28 games; plus-31; two World Junior Championships, just won a gold; he’s played in two WHL Championship Series and won a championship, so he brings a lot to our team on and off the ice.”

Clague comes to the Warriors fresh off winning a gold medal with Warriors captain Brett Howden, head coach Tim Hunter and Team Canada at the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship. He was an assistant captain for Canada during the tournament, finishing with two goals in seven games.

Howden and Hunter both became close with Clague during the World Juniors and will help his transition into the locker room.

“Kale is a world class player,” said Hunter. “He skates the puck out of trouble, he can make plays and get the puck out of trouble, he can make a play offensively and has creative in his game, he competes hard in the corners, just a solid defenceman.”

Originally selected with the sixth overall pick in the 2013 WHL Bantam Draft, Clague has put together quite the resume in the WHL. In 169 career games, the Lloydminster, AB product has 25 goals and 143 points. He won a WHL Championship with the Wheat Kings in 2016 and has 40 games of playoff experience.

Clague was taken in the second round, 51st overall, in the 2016 NHL Draft by the Kings.

The addition of Clague gives the Warriors one of the best defensive groups in the WHL as he joins Josh Brook, Jett Woo, Oleg Sosunov, Dmitri Zaitsev and Matthew Benson, as well as recent pick-up 19-year-old Brandon Schuldhaus.

“Our strategy for this deadline was to really build our backend,” said Millar. “We think Brandon Schuldhaus is a very good fit as a strong, hard to play against guy and then you add Clague in with the players that we have up front, the offence that we can generate, power play and so on.”

Leaving Moose Jaw in the deal are two key young players for the team. Burzan was the sixth overall pick in the 2015 WHL Bantam Draft by the Warriors, while Hartje committed to join the team out of Minnesota. Both were ranked this season by NHL Central Scouting for the 2018 NHL Draft.

After a busy deadline around the league that saw many valuable assets change hands, Millar said that was the price that they were going to have to play to add a top tier defenceman like Clague.

“There was lots of second thoughts, lots of back-and-forth and at the end of the day, the market place was set by the time we finalized our deal,” said Millar. “Coming out of it with Daemon Hunt not being in the deal was significant, Luka Burzan is going to be a good player in the league and Chase Hartje is a good skating defenceman.”

The first place Warriors entered the deadline leading the second place Swift Current Broncos by eight points for top spot.

This has been the season that the Warriors’ front office has been building towards since their Eastern Conference Final run in 2011-12. Millar said he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to make the team better in their quest for a championship.

“We have an opportunity to do something special here in Moose Jaw that’s never been done,” he said. “To the credit of our players, they put us here today, we have the best record in the Western Hockey League with a ton of injuries, so it was important for our management team and our coaches to show faith in the players to send a message that we’re challenging them to be all in and I had to do the same.

“We’ve had some ups and downs in my time here, there’s not a lot of banners (in the rafters) and this was the time to make a deal like this to put our best foot forward to win a WHL Championship.”

Clague is expected to arrive in Moose Jaw on Friday and make his debut that night when the Warriors will host the Edmonton Oil Kings to kick-off a weekend three-in-three.

Kaluski Dealt to Seattle

The Warriors swung one other deal on deadline day, trading 18-year-old forward Jaxan Kaluski to the Seattle Thunderbirds for a sixth round pick in 2019.

Kaluski had two goals and four points in 38 career games with the Warriors. He was injured last season after 16 games, breaking his ankle and missing the rest of the season.

The Lloydminster, AB product was originally a listed player by the Warriors.

Busy Deadline Day

There was some massive deals around the Western Hockey League over the past week leading into Wednesday deadline, including some significant moves by the Warriors’ East Division rivals.

Swift Current got the league talking on Tuesday when they acquired Stuart Skinner, Giorgio Estephan and Tanner Nagel from Lethbridge. Regina made a few splashes in deals with Saskatoon, bringing in Libor Hajek, Cameron Hebig and Ryan Kubic.

Millar said the Clague deal wasn’t in response to those, but they made it more important to get something done.

“From a team perspective and a manager’s perspective, you’ve got to really stay focused in your own strategy,” said Millar. “We’ve got a plan here and we’re going to try to do what we think is in the best interest of our club, but obviously we were cognizant of what other teams were doing and how they were improving their teams.

“It’s a real unique year because you combine a scenario where you have as many as 7-8 really good teams, you have our division with some very good teams plus the team that’s hosting the Memorial Cup and that created an environment that brought the competitiveness from the ice into the board room and it was heated.”

There was 17 trades in total made on deadline day alone Wednesday with 32 players and 33 draft picks changing hands. (Click here for a full deadline recap.)

The Warriors feel like they’ve given themselves as good as chance as any team to finish the season on top, but Millar admits that there’s still a long season left.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do here, now it’s about how we play,” said Millar. “We know that we can score, we believe our goals against has to go down a little bit, we’ve got to play the game the right way all the time and we have to continue to learn from the experience of a year ago to be playing the way we need to play to be successful in March, April and May.”

The Warriors skated to an 8-3 win over Calgary in their first game after the break. They have a three-in-three this weekend.