The Comets have been floundering a bit lately, but they about to get some reinforcements. With the conclusion of the Canucks season, the Comets will be getting four impact players back, as well as a fresh face.

The Comets have added Canucks defensive prospect Carl Neill to an Amateur Tryout according the AHL’s transaction page. Neill recently finished his final season in the QMJHL, collecting more points than any other defence prospect in the Canucks’ system.

They’ll also be getting four players back from the Canucks – Brendan Gaunce, Andrey Pedan, Mike Zalewski, and Ronalds Kenins – all of which will make a huge difference for the Comets going forward.

Neill is the first non-professional prospect to be added to the Comets this season, as Thomas Drance revealed recently that both Guillaume Brisebois and Tate Olson would not be joining Utica this year on account of their youth. Neill was left conspicuously absent from that discussion however, so we suspected that he might get a shot at the next level – particularly because he’s old enough to play in the AHL next season.

Carl Neill finished the regular season with 50 points (eight goals, 42 assists) in 64 games for the Sherbrooke Phoenix. Despite being an objectively terrible team, the Phoenix made the QMJHL playoffs (as 16 out of 18 teams do). Predictably, they lost in the first round, but to no fault of Neill – the Sherbrooke captain had four goals and two assists for six points in five games.

We recently ranked Neill as the Canucks’ tenth best prospect. His percentage of successful comparables was about 13 per cent at the conclusion of his season, owing partly to the fact that the QMJHL turns out considerably less prospects that the other two CHL leagues.

Whether Neill actually gets any game action is unknown at this point. The Comets have just three games remaining in their 2015-16 regular season, and their depth on defence is expanding: the recently got John Negrin back from injury, and will now get Andrey Pedan, their high minute defenceman back from injury.

Once the playoffs arrive, it’s highly unlikely that Neill will work his way into any games, considering that they’ll be in tough against a top AHL opponent (probably the powerhouse Toronto Marlies). There was some frustration from Canucks fans last year when Ben Hutton and Jared McCann didn’t get into any AHL playoff games, but that’s kind of the way it goes – Travis Green will be doing everything he can to win games once the postseason starts.

If there’s to be any hope that Neill plays, it’ll be this weekend. The Comets have three games in three nights and they already have a playoff spot locked up. It might be an opportunity to rest some players before the playoffs starts, though they may also want to push for more points – if they can pass the Bridgeport Sound Tigers or Portland Pirates this week (who they trail by one and three points, respectively), then they’ll avoid the Marlies in the first round.

The Comets will also be getting Brendan Gaunce, Andrey Pedan, Mike Zalewski, and Ronalds Kenins back, and boy will they be happy to see them. Zalewski and Kenins were up for just a brief time and will provide solid scoring depth, but Gaunce and Pedan are core additions to the roster – they are likely the respective high minute players on forward and defence.

Gaunce played 20 games in the NHL this season, scoring a single goal. The production certainly wasn’t there, but then again he was playing on a terrible Canucks team with the walls falling down around them. Gaunce was called up as a winger, but made the transition back to centre, his natural position, as it became more evident that McCann was outmatched there this season. The transition seemed to improve Gaunce’s game and he looked better than ever at the tail end of the season.

Gaune led the Comets in scoring at the time of his call up (just after the NHL trade deadline) with 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists) in 43 games. He’s been passed by Alex Grenier, Carter Bancks, and Jordan Subban, who have 47, 37, and 35 points respectively. However, Gaunce still have the highest points per game of any Comets player at 0.77.

Pedan played in 13 games with the Canucks, split evenly as a forward and a defencemen, due to a rather ridiculous experiment designed to test him as a “swing player”. While having swing players is helpful when it comes to in-game injuries, the Canucks sacrificed valuable assessment time to see where Pedan was as a defenceman, which (according to Jim Benning this morning) is still where they see him going forward. Pedan will be back on defence in Utica, where he belongs.

Both Gaunce and Pedan should be ready to become full time Canucks next season (though both may start in the territory of 13th forward/seventh defenceman), but for now they’re back to being veterans on a young Comets team that is looking to make a splash in the post-season.