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.

Windsor earned the right to play in the Memorial Cup final by playing its best hockey after the second period buzzer had sounded.

RIMOUSKI -- Ben Shutron didn't aw-shucks it. He didn't do the humble. Didn't filter his words and wrap them around the standard clichés.

"We're the best conditioned team in this tournament," the Windsor Spitfires' defenceman said after its Memorial Cup semi-final overtime win over the Drummondville Voltigeurs. "We've got the young legs. We're a helluva team."

Shutron spoke the truth. And qualification would fly in the face of the evidence.

Two games, the tie-breaker and the semi, on back-to-back nights against two strong QMJHL teams with home-ice advantage: Windsor won both games, closing hard. In fact, across six periods and a chunk of sudden death, the Ontario league champions raised its game at each intermission.

The shot clock read like an ECG for the Voltigeurs last night: Windsor outshot Drummondville 16-2 in the third period (one of the two was a dump-in) and 6-1 in less than five minutes of overtime. The Quebec league champs barely had enough left to skate through the handshake line.

By itself, that would be proof enough of the Spitfires' strength and endurance. Making it more emphatic was the fact that a couple of minutes into the second period defenceman Jesse Blacker, a 19-minute-a-game presence on the Windsor blueline, went down on the boards in a nasty and awkward collision with Voltigeurs forward Samson Mahbod. Both Blacker and Mahbod needed help to get off the ice and neither returned to action. Thus Windsor's D was stretched.

"I don't know how many minutes Ryan Ellis played … I'll have to see our stats on that," Spitfires Bob Boughner said. He wasn't about to guess-timate because casual followers of the game would put it down to exaggeration. "[The blueline has] an amazing bunch of kids. They persevered."

Ellis, the OHL's top defenceman this season, was the one easiest to notice because of his flashy puck handling and offensively creative game. But Ellis deferred-the aw-shucks thing-to Shutron, an overage defenceman who came over to Windsor from Kitchener at the trading deadline.

"Ben was a huge addition," Ellis said. "It made us a lot stronger and deeper."

From the first week of the season no one has doubted Windsor's ability to score, but back in November and December many wondered if they'd be able to stop other teams. They lacked a true shut-down combination until the acquisition of Shutron.

Ellis catches the fan's eye in every Spitfires game but it's Shutron who's in the sights of their opponents' top scorers. Ellis is the best-known Windsor blueliner thanks to his performance as the powerplay wunderkind at the world juniors and the stolid play of stay-at-home Harry Young, the team captain, frees Ellis to freelance. Shutron is maybe a little under-appreciated but he and Mark Cundari roll over the boards when the other guys heat up.

Shutron did take a turn in the spotlight last night with a rare bit of offence. A scorer of six goals in 67 games this season, Shutron walked in from the blueline and fired a shot that split Marco Cousineau's uprights with a couple of minutes to go in the first period. That gave Windsor a 2-0 lead and it looked it might be a coast from there.

It didn't quite work out that way. Drummondville came back to tie the game in the second period, thanks to a goal by Samson Mahbod (the shift before he and Blacker collided unfortunately) and another from Yannick Riendeau on a five-on-three powerplay for the Voltigeurs.

That was as good as it got for the Voltigeurs. Drummondville had a day of rest coming into the game while Windsor had to come from behind in the third period to beat a game Rimouski Oceanic team. Yet in the third period and overtime, the Voltigeurs had trouble enough to gain the Spitfires' blueline with the puck. A psychic with bills to pay couldn't have seen Drummondville generating a scoring chance even if the game went past midnight. Shutron and Cundari were pivotal in the role of deniers of Riendeau, who rang up a mind-boggling 29 goals and 23 assists in just 19 playoff games this spring.

Adam Henrique scored the winner on Windsor's 47th shot of the evening but if it hadn't been him, it was only a matter of time for a team-mate to do the honors of putting the Spitfires into Sunday afternoon's final against the Kelowna Rockets.

As discussed in this space in the run-up to the semi-final, Windsor's a good team but a young one. Shutron, an overager, brings valued experience to the room and the ice. He has seen this all before. Last year Kitchener was making a run at the Memorial Cup and acquired the native of Orleans from the Kingston Frontenacs.

"This team is a lot like that Kitchener team … except this team is a year younger," Shutron said.

And he's a year older.

Shutron was a fourth-round draft pick of the Chicago Blackhawks in 2006 and that he's back in the O as an overager says something about his prospects as a pro. A NHL scout could admire him but not fight for him, not when he's a listed six-feet, not when he works with an unspectacular offensive skill set. Never say never, I guess, and guys have come from farther back. Nonetheless, as a fifth-year junior, he's an incredibly useful junior player and with Windsor a vital one. He takes charge on the ice with Cundari.

Example: In the third period, at one rare juncture when Drummondville actually had a faceoff in the Spitfires' end. Shutron was the traffic controller before the puck was dropped. He moved Cundari around (impatiently, slamming his stick on the ice, just to put across the urgency). Off the face-off Shutron cleared the zone. Crisis averted.

Being able to do what needs to be done is half the battle, but only the second half. Knowing what has to be done is the front half and without that ability can only help you by chance. There are all kinds of great pro prospects who come out of the Memorial Cup without a title (e.g. Drummondville's draft-eligible defenceman Dmitry Kulikov). Inevitably, though, a Memorial Cup champion has an ensemble that features a guy like Shutron.

"I'm expected to be a leader out there because of my experience," Shutron said last night. "I can let my team-mates know what it's like to be in this tournament and in situations like this. And I tell them what this chance means. It was hard for me last year when we lost in the final [to Spokane]. I didn't think I'd ever get the chance to play again. This is one in a million … but when I came over [to Windsor] I could see being here …"

The voluble Shutron kept right on talking. For all of his enthusiasm he knows more than anyone else in the Spitfires' room that it's not a championship until they wheel out the (mended) Memorial Cup. Kelowna has been waiting in the wings and the Rockets possess Jamie Benn, the big winger who has been lights-out in the post-season. Clamping down on him is going to fall to Shutron, Cundari and the rest of a thinned-out Windsor blueline on Sunday. The fascinating subtext: Benn, a prodigy whose greatness and stall in the Dallas Stars' dressing room await him, vs Shutron, a guy with a second and last chance to play on the biggest stage he'll ever skate onto.