What is it about junior hockey that creates such intense, emotional and memorable rivalries?
One of the most appealing aspects of the Canadian Hockey League is the heated rivalries between small communities.
As small communities compete with other similar communities, pride and passion are often on the line. And every so often two rival communities boast top-level teams, bringing that passion and rivalry to new heights.
Last season, the Tri-City Americans and Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League comprised the best rivalry in the CHL. The eastern Washington state rivals battled 12 times in the regular season and their season series, won by Tri-City, determined the winner of three championships: the U.S. Division, WHL Western Conference and WHL regular season title.
Tri-City had the advantage, but not the final word.
Spokane defeated Tri-City in an epic, seven-game playoff thriller. Five of the seven contests went to overtime, and three of those went to double OT. Spokane then went on to win the WHL and Memorial Cup championships.
The Spokane-Tri-City rivalry definitely lived up to the hype, giving one team pride, bragging rights, and most importantly, a pair of championships.
While the 2008-09 season may still be in full swing with more than a month remaining before playoffs, a similar rivalry has taken the forefront in the Québec Major Junior Hockey League.
The two rivalries may be home to two different leagues, and for that matter, two different countries, but for many reasons, the Drummondville Voltigeurs-Shawinigan Cataractes rivalry closely resembles that of Tri-City-Spokane.
Like their counterparts in Washington, the Voltigeurs-Cataractes rivalry has been just as heated and could have similar implications on the Memorial Cup tournament in May.
Drummondville has the edge in the standings – currently five points ahead – but Shawinigan holds the tiebreak after winning the season series with a record of 5-2-1-0.
The rivals boasts the top two records in the league standings and Shawinigan’s 86 points are one more than Québec and Moncton heading into Thursday’s action.
Much like the rivalry in WHL, the winner of this rivalry will likely crown the regular season champions, meaning home ice throughout the playoffs.
Unlike the WHL, the QMJHL playoff format comes with a twist. With four divisions in the QMJHL, the top team in each receives the top four seeds, regardless of overall standings. Therefore, the second-place team in the Telus Central Division standings will likely finish fifth overall. Should each of the four division winners move on to the second round, the fifth place team will start on the road, in spite of possibly having a much better record than their opponent.
So in this instance, much more than pride is on the line when determining the regular season winner between Shawinigan and Drummondville.
"It’s sad. One (of the two teams) is going to be losing home ice advantage whether (it’s them) or us but that’s the way the rules are set and we need to deal with that," Shawinigan head coach Eric Veilleux said.
"Our team or Shawinigan will finish with 100 points or more and one of them will finish second in the division and won’t have home ice advantage in the second round," echoed Drummondville general manager Dominic Ricard. "That’s why it’s tough to have Shawinigan in our division."
Like their WHL counterparts, this QMJHL rivalry is always heated, regardless of the discrepancies between depth and talent on the two rosters. Now that a regular season and division title are on the line, the rivalry is amplified to levels it hasn’t been in years.
But if the two teams are getting caught up in the rivalry, neither is tipping their hand.
"We’re thinking of ending the season properly, on a good note, playing some good hockey and if we’re close or we’re ahead, we’ll take it but there are no more games against them we can take advantage of," Veilleux said.
Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are often used as the standard bearer as far as heated rivalries are concerned. It’s often speculated when one of those two teams makes a trade for an elite player, the move is made both to increase their odds of beating the other while also keeping that particular player away from the other team.
It appears as though Ricard may have borrowed from MLB’s playbook near the trading deadline, when he added one of the league’s top snipers, Chris DiDomenico, from Saint John.
Although Ricard wouldn’t say the move was solely intended to even the odds when facing Shawinigan’s goaltender Timo Pielmeier, the stats show a more telling story.
In the first three games of the season series, Pielmeier recorded one shutout and a sparkling .961 save percentage.
In the four games since however, Drummondville beat Pielmeier 15 times on 142 shots. DiDomenico scored in the only game he faced Pielmeier, as member of the Voltigeurs, a 5-3 loss on Jan. 28.
"We improved a lot of things individually and collectively," Ricard said of the difference in his team following the first three losses to their rival. "The most important; we found a solution to beat their goaltender Pielmeier.
"The first objective to trade for DiDomenico is to improve the team and give more punch offensively to support Samson Mahbod, (Yannick) Riendeau, (Dany) Massé," Ricard continued. "In the Q, to win the President’s Cup or to be a contender for the Memorial Cup and to represent the Q, you must have good offence."
Just as either the Red Sox or Yankees would have done, the Cataractes matched the Voltigeurs’ moves by making some of their own. Coincidentally, one of the players they added to shut down high-scoring forward DiDomenico is a former teammate of his, defenceman Alex Grant.
The team also added forward Maxime Macenauer from Rouyn-Noranda, another former teammate of Voltigeurs forward Riendeau.
While the moves were made to improve their chances to contend for the league title, and beat their rival, neither team will find out how successful their moves were until late in the playoffs.
It’s unlikely these two teams will meet before the semifinals or, baring lower-seeded team’s producing upsets, in the final. And as they embark on the final month of the regular season, the two will work feverishly to one-up each other in an attempt to gather the coveted division title.
And should they meet again down the road, it won’t take long to renew hostilities.
"The feeling of that big, old rivalry will always be there, it’s not just only this year," Veilleux said.
With so much on the line, the biggest race of the season could come down to two of the league’s biggest rivals. And much like the Tri-City-Spokane rivalry a year ago, the Drummondville-Shawinigan rivalry could go the distance in providing fans with the highly-intense passion and excitement found only in junior hockey.
