Knights win the OHL Championship
By Aaron Bell
Within seconds of being announced as the host city for the 2005 MasterCard Memorial Cup, London Knights’ coach and co-owner Dale Hunter said his team planned to earn their way into the Canadian Hockey League’s Championship tournament.
As hosts, the Knights earned an automatic bye into the tournament, but Hunter vowed that his team wasn’t satisfied with anything less than going through the front door as OHL champions.
Mission accomplished.
On Saturday, the Knights beat the Ottawa 67’s 6-2 to win the SportChek OHL Championship Series in five games to win their first championship in their 40-year history.
“We never won, so it’s huge,” Hunter told the Canadian Press after hoisting the J. Ross Robertson Cup in front of 9,090 fans on home ice on Saturday. “It’s definitely rewarding.”
Hunter, who co-owns the team with his brother and Knights’ general manager Mark Hunter, build their team to peak this season. They nearly earned a ticket to the Memorial Cup last year and used their seven-game loss to the Guelph Storm in last year’s Western Conference championships as fuel for their 16-2 playoff run this year.
“You plant the seeds and you end up with a good crop and then a good harvest — you win,” Hunter explained. “The kids did it and you got to give them a whole lot of credit. It’s hard to win.”
The Knights opened the year with a CHL record-setting 31-game undefeated streak that drew a tremendous amount of national media exposure. They were the top-rated team in the CHL Top-10 rankings every week this season — it’s the first time a team has held the number one spot from flag to flag.
“To be champions, that’s what we needed, especially being ranked first the entire year in the CHL,” said Knights captain Danny Syvret. “If we fell short, it would be a disappointing time heading into the Memorial Cup.”
Former first round pick Corey Perry blossomed into the league’s most dominant offensive force this season. He ran away with the OHL scoring title despite missing eight games that included helping Canada win the World Junior Championships in January. Perry was the overwhelming choice by the media to win the Red Tilson Trophy as the league’s most outstanding player. He followed up by leading the playoffs in scoring with 38 points in 18 games and the media again selected the Peterborough native, who turns 20 on Monday, as winner of the Wayne Gretzky 99 Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs.
“This just proves to everybody that we could do what people put pressure on us to do,”
Perry said. “They expected us to win the OHL championship, and we did it. We’re going to the Cup through the front door.”
Perry joins Syvret (Top Defenceman) and Hunter (Coach of the Year) as major award winners in the OHL this year, but has turned his attention to adding one more trophy to his haul for the season.
“There’s only one thing left I can do this year – go out and win the Memorial Cup,” said Perry, who will open the MasterCard Memorial Cup on Saturday against the QMJHL champion Rimouski Oceanic. “That’s our next step.”
The celebration after the game poured out into the streets surrounding the John Labatt Centre on Saturday night. It’s likely to contiue right through next week into the Memorial Cup.
“The Knights have put the City of London on the map this year,” one fan said. “With this (championship) and hosting the Cup, they have made us feel like a major league city.”
Photo: Dan Hamilton/VPS
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