LEWISTON – The youth movement continues.

On the eve of the Lewiston Maineiacs’ first game after a shorter-than-normal Christmas break, the team was again active on the trade front, and this time, the players involved were enough to turn some heads.

Michael Ward, a defenseman with Memorial Cup experience who’s been with the Maineiacs for parts of three seasons, is on his way to the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles as part of a four-player, one-pick swap.

“All that’s left is the logistical side of this, since the league office has been closed for the holidays,” Lewiston GM and coach Ed Harding said Friday.

The Maineiacs will send Ward and late draft pick Stephen Horyl, who’s never played in the league, to Cape Breton. In return, the Eagles give up 17-year-old defenseman Samuel Finn, considered one of the cornerstones of their future on the blue line, the rights to 20-year-old Murdock MacLellan and a fifth-round pick in the 2010 QMJHL entry draft.

“Ultimately, we traded the rights to Horyl for the rights to MacLellan,” Harding said.

The deal, one of a few high-end deals in the league in recent days, began with a phone call from Cape Breton and general manager Mario Durocher.

“They called and were hot ad heavy for Ward,” Harding said. “I told them any discussions involving Michael Ward would have to also involve Finn. Things went forward from there.”

Almost as important to the deal for Harding were the rights to MacLellan, who played for the Eagles last season, but was the odd man out in the 20-year-old situation this year.

“He’s torn between coming here and staying in Dieppe (where he plays Junior A hockey), but from what I understand, he’s leaning toward coming,” Harding said. “We’d like to see him do that. He’s a guy we tried to obtain last Christmas. He’s a very smart hockey player, he’d play PP, PK, and he’s good in the room.”

Finn, meanwhile, is a tough-as-nails, stay-at-home defenseman with two goals and six assists on the season. He was the linchpin of the deal.

“This isn’t a short-term thing, either,” Harding said. “He’s a kid we’d identified in the draft last year as a player of interest, and he was also taken in the first round, two picks after we selected Eric Gelinas. Now, we have two first-round defenseman at 17 years old on this team. He’s a competitor; he plays hard all the time.”

Horyl was an eighth-round selection for the Maineiacs in the 2007 QMJHL draft. The trade will put him closer to home, if he ever plays with Cape Breton.

Overall, Harding said, the team is starting to take shape for next year, and for the year after.

“We’ve added some young guys to the mix who are really hungry and want to play hard every night,” Harding said. “They want to prove they can play in this league, and for the fans, it should be exciting to see them come in and add more youth and excitement to the guys we have.”