By Mike Stubbs | AM980

The London Knights have made a trade with the Niagara IceDogs to acquire dynamic forward Braidy Wassilyn.

The swap is one-for-one as St. Catharines, Ont., native Noah Read heads to his hometown in return. Wassilyn was Niagara’s first-round pick in the 2024 OHL Priority Selection. He had eight goals and 39 points in 62 games for the IceDogs as a rookie.

“I think it alleviates a bit of a need for both teams,” admitted Rob Simpson, associate general manager of the Knights. “They wanted a player like Noah who competes and works hard all over the ice, and we saw with our lineup that we needed a little more goal scoring or punch that way, so it helps our offensive side of things.”

In a major coincidence, Wassilyn was chosen with the fourth overall pick. That was the same pick used by Niagara to select Sam Dickinson in 2022 before he was traded to London. He’ll join former Niagara teammate Max Crete, who was acquired by the Knights before the start of the 2025-26 season. Like Crete, Wassilyn was the captain of his U16 team. He led the Markham Majors in scoring with 31 goals and 62 points in 32 games.

“He is offensively gifted,” said Simpson, “He can make plays and find his own shot to be able to score. He’s a player who you want to play with because he’s going to make sure pucks are in the right areas to be able to create.”

Wassilyn is from Puslinch, Ont., and was a member of Team Canada Red at last year’s U-17 World Hockey Challenge and was assigned a ‘B’ rating by NHL Central Scouting just over a week ago, indicating a potential second/third round selection at next summer’s NHL Draft.

Read earned a spot last year on a roster without many openings and became a regular in the lineup right through to winning the 2025 Memorial Cup in Rimouski, Que., not an easy trait to find unless you have a team that has done it, Simpson said.

“It’s a big deal. You don’t understand how tough it is and how tight the team has to be and the way you need to play until you go through it, and that experience will definitely help their team.”

Wassilyn spent his entire minor hockey career in that area with the Niagara North Stars and Southern Tier Admirals. Wassilyn now joins an already talented Knights group that is thriving as of late and a bright 2008 born group featuring Jaxon Cover, Logan Hawery, Caleb Mitchell, Maksim Sokolovskii, and Cody Wood.

The Knights face the Peterborough Petes on Oct 30 in what could be Wassilyn’s debut before moving further east for games against the Ottawa 67’s and Kingston Frontenacs to round out the weekend.