Spirit hope to take advantage of home ice
As hosts of the 2024 Memorial Cup presented by Dow, the Saginaw Spirit have home ice advantage.
And they certainly plan to use it to their benefit.
“We’ve played our best hockey at home,” said Owen Beck (MTL). “Having our loyal fans in the stands is going to get us going and fire us up for every game, every shift, every hit.
“It’s going to be a great environment with the Memorial Cup going on in Saginaw for the first time ever.”
The Spirit have made the Dow Events Center a pretty formidable venue in 2023-24. The club went 26-7-1 in the regular season while in the playoffs they posted a 6-3-0 record.
“I don’t think many people like coming down to Saginaw to come play against us,” said Jorian Donovan (OTT). “Every team when they’re on home ice are a little better. When you have the crowd and the energy behind you, it’s huge.
“Our fans are very loud and it’ll be exciting to have home crowd advantage.”
The Spirit are well rested too. After a Game 6 defeat to London in the OHL’s Western Conference Championship, the Spirit haven’t played in 19 days. With a break ahead of tonight’s opener, it gave the players a chance to get away for a short period of time.
“We took a bit of time off and got away from everything,” Beck said. “We got to see our families … we came back and had a pretty high pace week, intense, lots of battles, lot of systems to get us ready for what’s to come.”
Tonight will be Saginaw’s Memorial Cup debut while the same can also be said for their opponents Moose Jaw. In the previous 10 tournaments, hosts have gone 5-5-0 in their tournament opener.
While tonight’s winner will create franchise history with a first Memorial Cup win, bigger goals remain on the horizon.
“It wasn’t necessarily the way we wanted to come in but we’ve earned that right building the team that we have built and being the team we are and hosting this thing,” Beck said.
“We’ve kind of been considered underdogs coming into this tournament which is fine with us. There are three good teams on the other side but we’ll adopt that underdog mentality and work our hardest and prove what we’re made of.
“I think we’re a pretty damn good team and we’re ready to show that.”
Tonight’s game can be seen live on TSN 1/5, RDS, NHL Network (USA only) and CHL TV at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT.
