Spokane cruises to perfect record at the MasterCard Memorial Cup
It was easy to assume that Tuesday’s game at the MasterCard Memorial Cup was meaningless to the Spokane Chiefs.
After starting the tournament with wins over the Kitchener Rangers and Belleville Bulls, the Western Hockey League champions had already clinched a berth in Sunday’s final game and could have mailed in an easy effort in their final round robin game against the winless Gatineau Olympiques.
But Chiefs’ coach Bill Peters said that there wasn’t one person in the Chiefs’ dressing room that would have accepted anything less than their best effort.
“Our players are competitive by nature and I think that’s why we’re a good hockey team,” Peters said. “It comes out intrinsically. I don’t have to get that out of them every night. If they’re going to play, they want to win. It’s the most competitive group I’ve been around in sport. I knew there wasn’t going to be a problem getting the juices flowing.”
The Chiefs responded from an early deficit and skated to a 3-1 win that gave them a perfect 3-0 record heading into the final on Sunday against the winner of Saturday’s semi-final between the Belleville Bulls (1-1) and Kitchener Rangers (1-1).
Alexandre Quesnel opened the scoring for Gatineau on a powerplay late in the first period but Drayson Bowman replied with a powerplay marker of his own early in the second period to tie the game. Mitch Wahl counted later in the period with what proved to be the game-winner and Levko Koper iced the win with an empty-netter in the last minute of the game.
“It was important for us to win the game,” said Bowman, who leads the tournament with five goals. “Going into Sunday we want to be ready and be sharp. We wanted to win the game for sure. We’ve put ourselves in the position that we want to be in. It’s perfect. It’s what we were looking for coming in.”
It was the second straight game that the Chiefs allowed just one goal.
“We take a lot of pride in playing good defence,” Peters said. “Our guys understand that the better we can play defensively then we can get on offence. We tried to score eight tonight to be honest. I thought their goaltender was outstanding. It’s not like we’re trying to play for 2-1 games. We’re trying to get to six as quick as we can – or seven or eight. But these teams are so good and the goaltenders are so good that unfortunately we haven’t been able to do that.”
The Olympiques finished the tournament without a win.
“We’re proud of the effort we had tonight from our guys,” said Gatineau coach Benoit Groulx. “But obviously that was not enough to win our first game. We’re very proud of our team. At the beginning of the year, no one would have thought that Gatineau would have been here. We came here and faced three very good hockey clubs. You’ve got to admit that these three teams are better than us.”
After dropping the tournament opener in overtime to the Kitchener Rangers on Friday and then a 6-3 loss to the Belleville Bulls on Monday, the Olympiques needed a win against Spokane to stay alive in the tournament.
“It’s not that we didn’t try; they were just a better team than us,” Giroux said. “Everybody in the room gave their all but in the end we couldn’t win. They played a great game. It was a tight game all night but at the end we couldn’t get that second goal.”
The Bulls and Rangers will meet again in a rematch of the OHL Championship Series that the Rangers won in seven games. First they will hook up in the round robin finale on Wednesday (7:00 p.m. Eastern on Rogers Sportsnet) before meeting again in the semi-final on Friday.
Photo: Aaron Bell / CHL
