The defending champion Spitfires are under pressure to win it all again.
The last junior-hockey season ended with the Windsor Spitfires posing for photos at centre ice at the Colisee in Rimouski. They had just won the Memorial Cup, a satisfying end that, but for a few nervous moments, was a season-long roll. The most remarkable thing was that they were the youngest team in the Memorial Cup tournament and younger than the teams that they beat en route to Rimosuki. They were the best team in the CHL for the 2008-09 season but everyone in junior-hockey circles knew that this team should be even better in 2010. Everyone in this case includes the Windsor Spitfires.
Most teams that make such runs are 19-year-old squads, the product of general managers who see that their teams have a shot, a good shot, at going deep in the spring and maybe, maybe, winning it all. That wasn't the Spitfires' story at all. True, they made a couple of very useful acquisitions at the deadline last winter but, with the exception of the over-agers, the core of the team's talent was going to be returning for another season, headed by centre Taylor Hall and defenceman Ryan Ellis. When the news came that the Spitfires had successfully lobbied Cam Fowler and the big defenceman from the U.S. under-18 program was opting to go to the OHL, it almost seemed unfair. With Hall and Fowler it looked like the top two picks in the 2010 NHL draft would be selected from the same junior team. Never seen anything like that in the modern era.
Which is to say, Windsor looked like the surest of sure things. What could go wrong?
I'm going to date myself now but I do so to make a point. ("Carbon-dating" would seem to be closer to it, I guess.) One of the first major-junior teams I watched closely was the Toronto Marlboros back in the early 70s. The 1971-72 team was one of the more spectacular teams I had ever seen and went 45-13-3 record during the regular season. Moreover, in the days of the 20-year-old draft, the Marlboros' top line, Billy Harris, Steve Shutt and Dave Gardner, scored 57, 63 and 53 goals respectively and went first, fourth and eighth overall in the 1972 NHL draft. They had a healthy helping of players who would have decent NHL careers, including Bob Dailey, Larry Goodenough, George Ferguson, Glenn Goldup, Paulin Bordeleau and Marty Howe. Wayne Dillon as a 15-year-old prodigy had to vie for time. So too less successfully did Dennis Maruk, another phenom. Maruk ended up being a 60-goal guy in the NHL while Dillon seemed like a casualty of too much too soon going to the Birmingham Baby Bulls and losing his way. But even guys on the absolute fringe of the team were good for a few NHL games or, unless they couldn't play at all, stints in the WHA or the minor pros. Suffice it to say that at any time the Marlies could throw over the boards five juniors on track for the NHL.
As impressive as losing only 15 out of 63 games might seem, there was a general feeling that the Marlies under-achieved in the regular season. Such were the expectations. The problem: At any time the Marlies had five future NHLers on the ice but would only have had six only in the last minute of games given away by the guy in the bulky pads who had just skated over to the bench. I won't name the goaltenders but I will single them out as the root cause of something less than a perfect season and the Marlies falling short of even an OHL championship. (Roger Neilson's Peterborough Petes prevailed.)
The Marlies ended up winning the Memorial Cup in '73 after a seven-loss regular-season. Toronto was maybe less of a team but had much more of a goaltender: Mike Palmateer. So it goes.
The lesson for the Windsor Spitfires: For all the talent that you can roll over the boards, everything can come undone at the last line of defence.
When we had to fill out all-star-team ballots at the Memorial Cup last spring, it was tough to name a candidate in goal. Andrew Engelage was the Spitfires' netminder and it's safe to say the NHL is something of a longshot for him. He and the goaltenders for Kelowna, Rimouski and Drummondville all had their struggles over that week in May.
Engelage, a 20-year-old, has come and gone and it looked like the job was going to be handed to Josh Unice, who had come over from Kitchener on the deadline last January. It hasn't worked out that way. Troy Passingham, a gangly kid from Mississauga, has earned the majority of starts with a .917 save percentage, better than Unice's numbers, better than Engelage's last season (and, seemingly, about twice the number posted by the goaltenders on the 1972 Marlies).
Goaltending was a possible Achilles Heel for this Spitfires team but could something else put them off the track to defend? For sure.
There are the conventional occurences that hit a good-to-great team. The Spitfires could run into injuries. It happens. They could run into a hot goaltender in a short series. It happens. But there are at least a couple of possible turns of events that apply more directly to Windsor.
The Spitfires were on such a glorious run last season that inevitably they became a team that was difficult to coach at times. They were that good and they knew it. They were young and winning was easy. General manager Warren Rychel did a great job putting the team together but coach Bob Boughner had to keep it together. Can Boughner sustain the intensity through the post-championship season? It's an even tougher assignment. On a team so loaded keeping everybody happy about ice time is a virtual impossibility, a point which led to defenceman Jesse Blacker, a Leafs' second-rounder last June, demanding a trade and landing in Owen Sound last week. Tensions like this play out all the time more than the fans and media know and rarely do they bubble over. But it has to be bad if a kid is so unhappy that he demands a trade after winning a championship. He's going to see some serious bonus money--what other prospects are the Leafs going to give it to for the next while? Staying put would have been the best thing he could have done.
Then there's the scrutiny that draft-eligibles Hall and Fowler will be playing under and the pressure that they're bound to feel--another potential distraction. By all reports Hall has handled it well to this point. Fowler has not been quite as impressive as some anticipated but he's still figuring out the league. A different learning curve, for sure. It's only going to be starting now. How many times will Don Cherry claim the Calgary-born Hall as Kingston's own, as if he mentored the teenager? It should be a near-weekly fixture as the draft nears and probably not what Hall or the Spitfires need.
Bob Boughner did a great job with the Spitfires last season but he enjoyed the advantage of expectations: Windsor was thought to be a good team that had a chance to be a very good team. This season the Spitfires are expected to be as good or better than the team that won the national championship. Those expectations were ratcheted up again this week when Warren Rychel was able to convince winger Kenny Ryan, another Leafs' second-rounder, to leave Boston College to come to Windsor. How high are those expectations? With an 11-3-0-1 record after a one-sided win in Owen Sound Friday night, the Spitfires will still be seen by some as disappointing.
