B12

PETER ASSAFF
Titan trail

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Spencer Jezegou is no stranger to the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League's holiday trading period.

While the 20-year-old captain of the Acadie-Bathurst Titan has never been traded, Jezegou is in his third season with the team and has watched teammates come and go at this time of year. With the final trading period of the season set to open following Friday's action, plenty of trade rumours involving players throughout the league have been swirling, and the Titan are no exception.

Jezegou said it is just one of those things you have to learn to deal with.

"Obviously there is going to be rumours, you can't stop that, but it shouldn't really affect the way you play," he said. "If something is going to happen it is going to happen either way, so you just try and put it in the back of your mind."

Jezegou has been mentioned in trade rumours himself this year, along with the team's other overage players: Tomy Joly, Drew Paris and Maxime Frechette. Each team is only allowed to have three 20-year-olds on their team and with Frechette, who had shoulder surgery last summer, ready to return to action the club will have to either trade him or deal another overage player to make room for the defenceman. As team captain, in addition to dealing with rumours involving his own status, the veteran has also been trying to help Acadie-Bathurst's younger players deal with the stress that comes along with trade time.

"With different guys you have to approach it differently," he said. "For some of the young guys this is probably the first trading period that they've been through and they'll realize that changes do happen, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. If guys talk to you about rumours that they've heard about them you've just got to try to tell them to put it away. Either way things will work out."

Despite the obvious need to move a 20-year-old, Titan general manager Sylvain Couturier is taking a wait and see approach to the holiday trading period. Couturier said things are much different on the trade front this year than in seasons past.

"In the past, the gap between the top teams and the middle of the pack was not that big and there were six for seven teams making a run," he explained. "There were a lot of teams that thought they had a chance, but this year it seems like it is a race between four teams and the rest are far behind. So it is a different situation I think, and we'll see what happens."

Peter Assaff is the sports editor for the Northern Light in Bathurst. His Titan Trail column appears Wednesday in the Telegraph-Journal. He can be reached at passaff@nbnet.nb.ca.