In his first year as general manager of the Kamloops Blazers, Craig Bonner acquired WHL bantam draft picks as though they were going out of style.

Nowadays, he’s turned his attention to acquiring defencemen.

Bonner got defenceman Bronson Maschmeyer from the Vancouver Giants on Thursday in exchange for a third-round pick in the 2010 bantam draft. Maschmeyer , an 18-year-old from Bruderheim, Alta., is expected to join the Blazers before tonight’s game against the Chilliwack Bruins (7 o’clock, Interior Savings Centre), but whether he will dress has yet to be decided.

The move leaves the Blazers with 11 defencemen — nine of whom have WHL experience — two weeks before the regular season is scheduled to start.

Bonner said despite having quantity on the blue line, he wasn’t pleased with the overall quality.

“After watching our team play three exhibition games, I wasn’t totally comfortable that we had a puck-moving guy back there,” Bonner said. “Bronson, through talking to Vancouver, became available and it was something I thought we had to jump at.”

Maschmeyer joins returning defencemen Giffen Nyren, Josh Caron, Curtis Kulchar, Linden Saip, Zak Stebner, Kurt Torbohm and Brandon Underwood, along with former Prince George Cougars blueliner Matt Cumming, who is with the team on a tryout basis.

Although he is only 5-foot-10 and 170 points, Bonner feels Maschmeyer will fill an important role for the Blazers.

“I thought we needed a puck-moving guy, and he’s a guy who could possibly play for us for three years,” Bonner said. “It was an intriguing deal for me and giving up a draft pick was an easy thing to do.”

This move, Bonner said, doesn’t mean that the Blazers’ current puck-moving defenceman, Nyren, should start packing his bags. Nyren led Kamloops defencemen with 11 goals and 46 points last season.

“With the way the game is, I think you can’t just have one (puck-moving defenceman),” Bonner said. “I think you need guys who can move the puck, and to have one, I don’t think that’s enough.”

Bonner wouldn’t come out and say that further trades are imminent, but . . .

“Since training camp, there have been some guys we’re really happy with . . . and some guys who haven’t been as good as we had hoped,” he said. “We talked all along about creating some competition for positions, and we have lots of players here . . .”

This is the fifth move in a little more than a year between Bonner and his brother, Scott Bonner, the Giants’ GM.

Craig Bonner, who worked as the Giants’ assistant GM before signing with Kamloops, said he feels more comfortable trading for players he knows.

“Scott and I have made a lot of deals, but, for me, I know what I’m getting with these guys,” he said. “I’ve worked with them.”

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The other trades between the Bonners were:

l Kamloops traded D Nick Ross and F Alex Rodgers to the Giants for Kulchar, third- and fourth-round picks in the 2009 bantam draft and a second-round selection in 2010;

l Kamloops got Saip for a seventh-round 2009 draft pick;

l The Blazers acquired F Sahir Gill from the Giants for a conditional second-round pick in the 2010 bantam draft. If Gill, who played with the BCHL’s Vernon Vipers last season, plays for the Blazers, the Giants will get the pick. So far, Gill has not signed with Kamloops;

l Kamloops got F Brett Lyon from Vancouver for a sixth-round pick in 2010.

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In his first game not wearing a full facemask, Blazers forward Dylan Willick took a high stick and needed five stitches to close a cut on his chin.

The next game, he scored a goal. The game after that, he scored another.

If this keeps up, Willick, who was listed in March, is going to play his way into a spot on the Blazers’ roster.

“I try to be energetic and get the team energized along with that,” said Willick after the Blazers 3-2 victory over the Giants at ISC on Saturday. “Hopefully if I can get the team going, it can get me going too.”

Willick, a Prince George native who is to turn 17 on Oct. 19, has two goals in three preseason games. He scored a shorthanded marker on Saturday and a power-play goal in Kamloops’ 6-3 loss to the Bruins in Hope on Wednesday.

Filling the net is nothing new for Willick, who finished eighth in the B.C. Major Midget League with 47 points in 40 games last season while with the Cariboo Cougars.

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Tonight’s game will be part of a doubleheader, with the Kamloops Storm and Chase Chiefs playing a KIJHL exhibition game starting at 4 p.m.

The cost for both games is $10.

The main event will be the Blazers-Bruins game, however, considering it will be the first time Bruins GM/head coach Marc Habscheid has coached against the Blazers in Kamloops since 2004, when he was the head coach of the Kelowna Rockets.

The Rockets won the Memorial Cup that year, and Habscheid, a former Blazers head coach, moved on to work for Hockey Canada and the Boston Bruins before being hired by Chilliwack on June 3.

mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca