A small minor league trade features a player with a previous connection to the team that received him.
On Friday, the Ottawa Senators acquired forward Jamieson Rees from the Carolina Hurricanes. Going back to Raleigh is a sixth-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Rees will be joining the Senators’ primary affiliate, the Belleville Senators. However, the Hamilton, Ontario native already had a previous connection to Ottawa, sort of.
When the Sens traded Erik Karlsson to the San Jose Sharks in 2018, one of the returns was a 2019 conditional second-round pick. Ottawa later traded that pick to Carolina to move up a few spots to take goaltender Mads Søgaard 37th overall. Seven picks later, the Hurricanes selected Rees.
After finishing his three-year career with the OHL’s Sarnia Sting, he turned pro with the Chicago Wolves during the 2020-21 season. Rees spent three seasons with the former affiliate of the Canes, helping the Wolves win the 2022 Calder Cup.
This season, with the Hurricanes not having an official AHL farm team, the 23-year-old has spent time with both the Charlotte Checkers and Springfield Thunderbirds. In 37 games, he has registered four assists. He is in the final year of his entry-level contract, with a cap hit of $839,167, which doesn’t affect the team’s salary cap while in the minors.
Rees is set to become a restricted free agent at the end of the season, with a minimum qualifying offer of $874,125.
In 192 AHL games, Rees has scored 29 goals and 55 assists. He has never played in the NHL.
As a result of the trade, the Hurricanes have three picks in the sixth round of this year’s draft. They have their own, Ottawa’s and the Toronto Maple Leafs, acquired on March 1 in a three-team deal that saw the Anaheim Ducks send Ilya Lybushkin back to the Leafs.
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