When Victoria traded for Tracey, they were a very good defensive team that needed offense. Victoria gave up a lot of assets for Tracey.
Today I started digging into Victoria's recent history, trying to find a player who didn't want to come back to play for Victoria, but couldn't find the article. Instead, I found out that during the off-season, Victoria traded away its 3rd best scorer in LW Kaid Oliver and its fifth best scorer in D Mitchell Prowse.
LW Oliver was traded for D Alexander (picks in trade, of course), but Alexander hasn't played a game this year. Oliver has 16 points in 14 games.
D Prowse was traded for F Dorrington (picks involved, of course). Dorrington has 0 points in 10 games and Prowse has 3 points in 13 games.
Damn, that's a lot of changes. The trades were made to get players who have an extra year to play in the WHL and picks. And since the construction of the team was mostly defensive before Tracey got there, the lack of offense become even more exposed when there's no defense there to hold. Guess 2019-20 what Victoria going all in with Tracey for the playoffs, but COVID happened and no playoffs. Now, the Royals are going through a rebuild on a team that has even less talent. I didn't realize this happened as I was expecting Tracey to lead mostly the same team next year.
Kinda feel bad for Tracey because in his sophomore year, his Moose Jaw team lacked talent, but they were constructed to be a scoring team with no defense. This year, Victoria lacks talent, but they were constructed to be a defensive team with little offense. Tracey has 12 points in 10 games and -4 rating. He leads the team in scoring. Only one player on the team has a positive +/- rating, but he missed two games as well.
On the plus side, Tracey has over a 1 point per game rate on a team without talent. Tracey had that at the beginning of last season with Moose Jaw before he was traded to Victoria. With Victoria last year, he was under a point per game, but lead Victoria in scoring rate. Tracey has scoring talent and proves he was not a passenger in his rookie season in the WHL. Still, I kinda wanted more from Tracey this year after putting on an additional 20 pounds... but when your team is bad you are stifled as there's only so much you can do.
