The Memorial Cup continues its tradition of serving up the unexpected.
RIMOUSKI, Que. -- The MasterCard Memorial Cup once again threw conventional wisdom out the window for a tired cliché: The only thing you can predict in this tournament is its unpredictable nature.
Each year's tournament features a team labeled as the favourite prior to its start. Last year it was the Kitchener Rangers and the year before that, smart money was on the Medicine Hat Tigers.
In this year's tournament, the odds-makers were favouring the talented Ontario Hockey League champion Windsor Spitfires. The one thing many people forget when picking favourites is that after undergoing four playoff rounds, some teams have difficulty adjusting to the round robin format.
While the round robin features three games for each team, the tournament is almost always decided in the first two. A loss in the first game is virtually a kiss of death for a team's Memorial Cup dreams. The tournament is essentially a seventh-game scenario each night.
The margin of error is extremely minimal in the Memorial Cup and a 60-minute, mistake-free game is nearly the only way to win.
Two years ago, the tournament's volatile and unpredictable nature crushed the Lewiston MAINEiacs' dreams. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League champions were less than two minutes away from receiving a bye to the championship final. Lewiston led 1-0 over the OHL champion Plymouth Whalers late in the third period.
Plymouth overcame the odds, scoring a shorthanded goal with just more than a minute in regulation to tie the game then again in overtime to keep their tournament alive. The loss for Lewiston then meant they were headed to the gut-wrenching tiebreak, against none other than those same Plymouth Whalers.
Lewiston lost to Plymouth and was the first team eliminated, a shocking conclusion to a tournament in which they were only a minute and 12 seconds away from playing for the trophy.
This year, Windsor fell behind 0-2 after losses to Drummondville and Rimouski, two games that were both decided by a single goal.
"I've said it all along and we've all talked about it up here at the podium that this tournament, this style of tournament, we could be sitting here up 2-0 before we play Kelowna tonight," Windsor head coach Bob Boughner said in the post-game press conference Tuesday.
"It's unfortunate because you don't get a chance to play in a seven-game series but it was desperate times tonight and everybody has a little bit of a smile on their face, a sense of relief that we look to get another day," Boughner added.
The Spitfires were ranked first in the nation in 20 of the 27 weeks of the Canadian Hockey League's Mosaic MasterCard Top 10 rankings. As such, their label of favourite wasn't surprising and the players knew the pressure from the outside was there.
"Maybe teams knew we were the favourite coming in and we needed to play our best game against them but we didn't come out the way we needed to," Spitfires forward Adam Henrique said. "It's not a seven-game series. It's one game and you have to bring it every game or else you'll find yourselves with your backs against the wall like we did."
Windsor lives to see another day but how long their Memorial Cup tournament lasts will be up to them. The Victoriaville Tigres are the only team to have gone through the tie-breaker en route to the final in the last eight tournaments. The Tigres then lost to the Kootenay Ice 6-3 after, quite simply, running out of gas.
The Spitfires have to win four games in a row to be crowned Canada's champion. The hill is so steep to climb that many teams know how unlikely it is. While the Spitfires weren't crying uncle, they would have to make this year's tournament the most memorable in history in order to win.
In last year's tournament, Gatineau head coach Benoit Groulx appeared rather dejected after his team lost their second game. He knew the odds and as much as these teams can take pride in winning their league title, a bad showing in the Memorial Cup thereafter dampens the thrill of winning a championship.
The Rockets may not have appeared to have a lot on the line Tuesday night since their place in the final was guaranteed, but a win Tuesday would have meant this tournament would have shifted to three teams.
"That's what we were talking about, we had a chance to knock them out tonight and we wouldn't have to play them again," Rockets captain Colin Long said. "We dropped the ball on that one."
As dejected as Long was in meeting with the media after the game, the silver lining is that his team could soon be playing against a tired opponent in the final. While it was hard for Long to look beyond his team's loss, Memorial Cup history is on his side.
The 1999 Ottawa 67's and 2007 Vancouver Giants are the only two teams to win the Memorial Cup after going through the semifinal in the last 10 tournaments. However, given the unpredictable nature of the Memorial Cup tournament, perhaps Long has good reason for skepticism.
