Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

With six days to go, Kelowna has locked up a spot in the Memorial Cup final, but who they'll play is still up for grabs.

RIMOUSKI: The Memorial Cup is a ten-day tournament but half the suspense ended on Day Four.

Kelowna's 6-4 victory over Drummondville Monday night locked up a spot in the final for the Western Hockey League champions. The identity of their opponents in the championship game is all that's left to be determined but if the Rockets win again Tuesday night it won't be the Windsor Spitfires.

With all due respect to Kelowna and Drummondville for what they've accomplished just to get to this tournament, I have to say that neither team looked like a national champion last night. Granted, the game featured some interesting stuff, notably Jamie Benn's four goals (and his 150-foot shot that hit a post instead of Drummondville's empty net in the dying seconds). But it wasn't a classic by any stretch.

The tilt was marred by goaltending that you'd call 'suspect' in polite company or in front of the netminders' parents. Not that the gaffes were only made by the masked men. No, some of the giveaways were painful to watch. In 60 minutes it didn't look like one check was thrown in anger or with malice, so for great long stretches the Colisee crowd was as quiet as an audience at the ballet. No, it was not one for a time capsule. No one will make I-was-there claims, probably more will look back on it and ask: Was I there?

That said, there was reason to think that it will be these two teams that will be back at it on Sunday and with a chance to raise their games.

One who could scarcely raise his game at this point is aformetioned Benn. In the run-up to the world juniors I touted him as a candidate to be a tournament-defining player. Right idea, wrong tournament. I still believe that he could have had a more memorable under-20 championship if he hadn't been given a limited role, playing beside Calgary's Brett Sonne and Medicine Hat's Tyler Ennis on what turned out to be the fourth line. In the WHL playoffs and especially here he's looked like a first-line finisher throughout.

Last night he scored in practically every way possible: a one-timer from the slot on the powerplay, a penalty-kill breakaway, a five-on-five finish of a picture passing play that game the Voltigeurs goaltender Marco Cousineau no chance and, on what turned out to be the winning goal, a fluttering change-up that Cousineau flubbed with less than nine minutes to go in a tied game.

Maybe the nicest play he made all night was a pass to Cody Almond for the goal that knotted the game 2-2 midway through the second period. Yeah, finishing is the best aspect of his game but it's not the only one.

Looking back at it now, I can see how the braintrust at the world juniors slotted him for a supporting role rather than a lead. It's the Big Man-syndrome. He's listed at six-foot-two but looks and plays a little bigger than that. It doesn't look like he's skating that fast or, in fact, skating that hard. But that's just appearances. He manages to get free and is never having to catch up to the play. Compounding that is his demeanor. "Laid back" doesn't start to describe it. You might get the idea that he plays at his leisure. You would be wrong. Witness this.

I admit it was heart-warming stuff to see Angelo Esposito at the world juniors but it should have been Benn over Espo with John Tavares on the first line at the under-20s. It was clear then and even clearer now that Benn has notched 18 goals in 21 post-season games for the Rockets.

There's no blaming Team Canada for not figuring out how good Benn can be. You get the impression that even Benn hasn't given it much thought. Not until Dallas drafted him 129th overall in the 2007 draft straight out his hometown team Victoria did Benn seem to take the game all that seriously. He was set to go to Alaska on a hockey scholarship and might have thought he had a better chance in baseball than on the ice. (As per the earlier link, Drayson Bowman might suggest that Benn's best chance would be in the boxing ring.)

Another Kelowna player who raises his game and cranes necks whenever he steps on the ice is defenceman Tyler Myers. At six-feet-eight we're taking about the Big-Big Man syndrome.

While Benn was dormant and under-utilized at the world juniors, Myers was thrust into a prominent role almost certainly ahead of schedule. He had some struggles there but played better as the tournament hit the elimination round.

"I came back to Kelowna more confident in my game," Myers said Monday night. "I played against the best players and proved to myself that I can play at that level."

Myers seems to be doing everything better at this stage than just five months ago - skating, puck-handling and reading the play. If he wasn't a helmet taller than the next nearest guy you wouldn't know that it's him.

Myers figures that he's ten pounds heavier than he was a year ago when he played for the Canadian team that won at the under-18s in Russia. He's still going to have to fill in more when he lands in the Buffalo Sabres' line-up, but there's no doubt that he will. A couple of times last night he laid down in front of shots - quite a sight, he could have blocked shots even if the puck had been passed over to the far wing.

Tuesday night you get to see Benn, Myers and the rest of the Rockets in a game that means not a heckuva lot to them-though I suspect that Kelowna would be as happy as anyone to see Windsor out of this tournament.

Stuff that fell out of my notebook: Not the best night for Dmitry Kulikov, Drummondville's draft-eligible d-man. Kulikov made a painful turn-over on the powerplay that handed Benn a breakaway for a goal. Other struggles on the night for him: If somehow the National Hockey League mandated that all players use dull-bladed skates I suspect that Drummondville's Yannick Riendeau would emerge as an all-star. I can't imagine that anyone at any level of hockey gets more production out of, cough, marginal skating. It seems like he has trouble standing, never mind skating. Absent last night without a note: Kelowna's Mikael Backlund. It wasn't until the third period that I realized the Flames' first-rounder hadn't been scratched. There in body but not in spirit: Mark Guggenberger. Riendeau scored the first Drummondville goal from the corner with no angle whatsoever. One bank of Guggengerger's skate. He'll have to be better in the final if any of these teams steps up. A Windsor loss to Kelowna Tuesday would clinch semi-final berths for the Quebec teams here. That would mean that Drummondville would play the host Oceanic in both the final game of the opening round and the semi, a repeat of what happened with Belleville and the Rangers in Kitchener last year. Not a promising prospect given that Drummondville swept Rimouski in the QMJHL semi-finals.