CHL

Brayden Schenn is a member of the Brandon Wheat Kings.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

In one of the 15 or so pieces which comprise a special exhibit now on display at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, a paint-covered hockey puck was repeatedly slammed against a canvas. Another work features trees made of hockey equipment.

They can all be viewed, free of charge, through next month, including a 10-day stretch in which the gallery's home of Brandon, Man., becomes a star of Canadian junior hockey as host city for the Memorial Cup. It is a coincidence in timing that was not lost on Jennifer Woodbury, the gallery's executive director.

"As you know, Brandon is also a hockey town," she said. "We're very fond of the Wheat Kings here: 'Go Wheaties,' as we like to say. And this art gallery tries very hard to interact with the community in a significant way around contemporary art, which, as you can imagine, can be kind of tricky in what is basically an agricultural community."

The exhibit is called "Hockey Town," which means life will imitate art Friday when the Wheat Kings open the tournament against the defending champion Windsor Spitfires (Rogers Sportsnet, 8 p.m. ET). It will mark Brandon's fifth appearance at the Memorial Cup, and its first as the event's sole host.

Brandon and Windsor will be joined by the WHL champion Calgary Hitmen and their counterparts from the QMJHL, the Moncton Wildcats. The championship final has been scheduled for May 23, and organizers last week said they had sold all but a few standing room ticket packages.

"It's been a good hockey community," Wheat Kings owner Kelly McCrimmon said. "The fact that Brandon is the only major junior franchise in the province of Manitoba I think probably gives us a little bigger footprint in our market than what some teams might enjoy."

Brandon enjoyed a solid season, posting 50 wins to finish second in the WHL standings with 104 points. Calgary was the only team to finish with more (107), and the Hitmen proved it was no accident in the third round of the playoffs, beating the Wheat Kings in five games en route to the league title.

"It's probably one of the hardest trophies to win in all of sports," said Calgary's leading scorer Brandon Kozun. "There's three leagues, so many teams and only one team wins it. I've been waiting for a couple years to get that opportunity. It's pretty nice to get that shot now."

Moncton also finished above the 100-point plateau, but finished third in the regular season standings. The Wildcats were the last team to qualify for the Memorial Cup, needing six games to dispose of the Saint John Sea Dogs in the QMJHL final.

"It's hectic in terms of preparation for sure," Wildcats coach Danny Flynn said. "Every game is the best-of-one and you have to be prepared to play your best and not look too far ahead."

No team had as difficult a road as the Spitfires, who swept through their first two playoff series only to fall behind 3-0 to the Kitchener Rangers in the conference final. Windsor, led by household names such as forward Taylor Hall and defenceman Ryan Ellis, rallied to win each of the next four games to continue its march to Brandon.

In some ways, their post-season run this year mirrored the challenges the Spitfires created for themselves at the Memorial Cup last year. Windsor lost its first two games, becoming the first team in history to win each of its next four to win the tournament.

"I'm proud that Windsor has a Memorial Cup-winning team," Spitfires co-owner and head coach Bob Boughner said. "The community is behind us. The city has been hard hit in the last year, and I think it really gave the city something to lean on."

Windsor has held Canada's highest unemployment rates for the better part of two years, with the latest numbers reportedly showing 12.6 per cent of the population struggling without work. And given its heavy reliance on the manufacturing sector -- specifically with big-ticket automotive products -- University of Windsor business professor Mark Meldrum said the city's future remains challenging.

"We tend to exit a recession after everyone else," he said. "So we're the first one in, and we're the last one out, thus giving the impression that, heck, we're always in trouble."

Windsor mayor Eddie Francis has lauded the Spitfires for giving "people permission to be proud of our city and our community."

And the team rebounded from the trouble it found against Kitchener to sweep the Barrie Colts in the OHL final, brushing aside the No. 1-ranked team in the country to continue its quest to become only the fifth team to repeat as Memorial Cup champions.

"We've been through a lot this year," Ellis said. "This group of guys has been together for a long time, and we've been working toward stuff like this for our whole lives. I think the guys are ready to go. We know what it's like to win one -- to win two would be an unbelievable experience."

Back at the art gallery, Woodbury was hoping some of those in town for hockey would drop into experience the art exhibit.

"It's a tricky one, and we kind of knew it would be tricky right from the get-go, because artists are not always sports fans," she said. "So they're kind of, 'Gee, we don't want to go see an exhibition about hockey.' And the sports fans are just kind of a little bit scared of art."

Woodbury was confident traffic would increase once the Memorial Cup rolled into town, a hockey town on the Prairie.

"It's such a unifying force, something to get behind, something to root for," she said. "It's our thing, the Wheat Kings, and people just love them here."

-- With files from Canadian Press reporter Donna Spencer