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Maxim Trepanier is the latest player to join this year’s Memorial Cup host team.

The Halifax Mooseheads sent a 2020 first-round pick and pros-pect William Dagenais to the Gatineau Olympiques for Trepanier and a 2020 fourth-round pick on Thursday. The 19-year-old left-winger was Gatineau’s leading scorer at the time of the trade with 33 points in 29 games. He spent a season-and-a-half with the Rimouski Oceanic before landing in Gatineau at this time last year.

“He’s a skilled forward, he plays hard, he kills penalties and he plays on the power play so he adds another element of speed and skill to our lineup,” said Halifax general manager Cam Russell. “He’ll help us and I like the depth that we’ve got up front and on the back now.”

The Mooseheads picked Dagenais, 16, in the fourth round of this year’s QMJHL draft. He is from Gatineau.

Trepanier is the second key forward added to the Mooseheads during the Christmas break. Russell also acquired Charlottetown Islanders veteran Keith Getson on Dec. 22 for winger Jordan Maher and two draft picks.

“With (Ostap) Safin’s injury and his status up in the air — we’re still waiting for him to get back — we just felt we wanted to round out the depth up front,” Russell said. “We’ve had some forwards who have stepped up and played well. If you can go into playoffs and throw four lines at a team in a seven-game series, that can really wear a team down. I think right now we’re feeling good about the fact we have four good lines that can score.”

Safin has been in and out of the lineup with a hip problem the Mooseheads discovered when they acquired him from the Saint John Sea Dogs in September. They appealed to the QMJHL earlier in the month about being compensated by the Sea Dogs but the ruling didn’t really resolve much. The league ruled the 2020 first-round pick Halifax sent to Saint John would be returned, except the Mooseheads had to give the Sea Dogs their 2021 first-rounder instead.

Safin has only appeared in 10 of Halifax’s 33 games so far. He has not played since Nov. 25.

“He didn’t want to push it at the world juniors so he went home for Christmas and he’ll be back Jan. 2,” Russell said of the Czech winger. “Hopefully we’ll get him back in the lineup shortly after that. It’s been a nagging hip injury that we’ve been trying to rehabilitate and get better for the second half.”

Russell is also expecting to get Samuel Dube into the lineup for the first time this season. The rookie forward played in the first two games of the season but has had to sit out since after doctors discovered a blood clot in his leg.

“He’s been cleared for contact so he should be back in the lineup, possibly this week,” Russell said of the 2018 first-round pick. “It’s nice to have him back. We have lots of forwards here now so we’ll probably do something about that soon.”

At the very least, Russell will likely have to ship out one or two forwards because there are now 16 on the Halifax roster and only 12 dress for each game. Beyond that, there is always pressure to keep loading up in anticipation of hosting the Memorial Cup but Russell didn’t sound like he felt anything drastic was required leading up to the Jan. 6 deadline.

“We said all along we started putting this team together a couple of years ago and we’ve got a lot of good hockey players here, a lot of players we really like,” Russell said. “We’ve never felt like we’ve had to do a whole lot more. I like our defence group a lot, I like our goaltenders — they’ve both played well — and I really like the depth we have up front now.

“The other side of that is you can’t keep reaching into the cookie jar. You only have so many assets and we don’t want to jeopardize the future of our hockey team.”

The Mooseheads return to the ice Friday when they play the Islanders on the road.