Matthew Tkachuk is falling over himself. Christian Dvorak is yelling, arms open, ready for the jump-hug he’ll dole out once his teammate gets back on his skates. Mitch Marner has launched himself over the bench and he’s tearing off his helmet and throwing his gloves and stick in the air while he skates to the pile-on that’s milliseconds from forming. London Knights gear is all over the ice. Tyler Parsons’s goalie stick is mid-air, and he’s pretty sure he’s never skated as fast as he is right now so he can get to the celebration he’s been waiting nine months for.
Chase Marchand is closer than he wants to be to all of this. The Rouyn-Noranda goalie looks down at the ice and keeps his eyes there as he skates to centre. Captain Francis Perron stops his keeper near the faceoff dot, wraps him in a hug. Neither player says anything. Most of their Huskies teammates are on the bench, staring at nothing. There are tears in a lot of those eyes.
This is what accompanies the biggest prize in Canadian junior hockey, the MasterCard Memorial Cup, a title the London Knights secured for the second time in franchise history with a 3-2 overtime victory against the QMJHL champions, the team that entered this tournament as the No. 1 seed in the Canadian Hockey League, but that came up against a London squad riding a lengthy undefeated streak that never ended. For many of these players, it’s the biggest game they’ll ever be a part of. And whether they win or lose here, most don’t know what comes next. The NHL beckons for some. Or school. Or a job. Marchand, 20, the undrafted goalkeeper, speaks for many when he answers the what-does-the-future-hold question with: “I have no idea. Hopefully good things.”
No matter what follows in hockey, for many here, this is the last time they’ll play with a team as kids. It’s probably the last time they do the things kids do when they’re at a travel tournament, and form the bond kids form on a championship team. This run, being a part of the Memorial Cup, is the stuff of a minor hockey player’s dreams, no matter the ending.
The laughing and clapping and sound of “Ice Ice Baby” fills the rink. A circle of Knights players is hopping on the spot on the ENMAX Centrium concourse level, the laughter hitting its peak when draft-eligible forward Max Jones jumps into the middle and busts into a dance that defies description. When the music changes to Flo Rida’s “Low”, defenceman Brandon Crawley joins in the middle, and the two make their teammates laugh some more while they tear it up. One loses his hat and the other leans down, picks it up slowly through his legs and tosses it.
This is the Knights’ pre-game off-ice warm-up, and you quickly see what Marner, the Maple Leafs’ fourth-overall pick in 2015, means when he says: “joking around with these guys is the best.” Trainer Doug Stacey takes over and yells instructions, including: “Move those hips, boys!” They do push-ups, high knees, jumping jacks, quick feet. They run around and check each other, laughing. Then they sprint down the hall to get ready for the game ahead.
That’s the fun the fan base doesn’t get to see. But once the rink doors open to the public, you can tell Alberta’s been waiting more than four decades to host this party, the last opportunity coming in Calgary in 1972. It’s a first for Red Deer, home to some 100,000, and to fans long-time coach and Albertan Brent Sutter says, “treat this team like the pros.”
This is Sutter’s 11th year behind the bench in Red Deer. He’s known for discipline—his players sometimes wake up at 6 a.m. to study game tape, and he once made his team use wooden sticks because he didn’t think the effort was there. But the Viking, Alta. product melts when he talks about this tournament. “It’s been really, really good,” Sutter says. “I mean, this has been awesome.” You could mistake the coach for a player.
In the stands, there are cowbell sections and areas for fans who wear horns, and mascot Wooly Bully runs around the concourse pumping his fists while Rebels flags wave and people holler and blow horns and wear home-team sweaters and chant “Let’s go Red Deer!” even when their team isn’t playing. “People here have been excited for a long time,” says the Rebels’ top defenceman, Haydn Fleury, a seventh-overall pick of Carolina. He’ll play his final junior game in a couple days’ time, after which he’ll face the media with tears in his eyes following a semi-final loss to the QMJHL champions. “Now that’s it’s here,” Fleury says, “it’s real easy to see why.”
Prior to every game, there’s a short moment of silence, just before the anthem singer is about to get going. That’s when a fan in the stands yells the name of the opposing team’s goalie and the rest of the crowd responds with: “You suck!” It’s tradition. It happened to Marchand, twice. “They said you suck?” the Huskies keeper says, grinning. “I thought they said ‘You rock!’ He’s kidding, of course. “I love the fans here. They’re great and they’re funny. It’s fun to play in as much energy as this building has.”
It’s fun, too, to spend as much time on the road as these kids are together here. Even the Rebels stay in a hotel for the nearly two-week stretch. This is unlike any other road trip they’ve ever been on in their lives, unlike any road trip they’ll ever be on again, save for the lucky few who crack the Memorial Cup more than once.
On off-days, some teams forgo a practice altogether to rest up and bond. The Rebels made a day-trip to nearby Sylvan Lake, a waterfront town that’s about 25 km west of Red Deer and home to provincial parks and giant waterslides. “We played some mini-golf and had some ice cream,” Fleury says, grinning. Sounds ideal.
There aren’t big team celebrations at this point, though. Arizona prospect Conner Bleackley, a Rebels forward, says a bunch of the guys played X-Box in a teammate’s room after Red Deer’s last win. “We’ll hopefully save the big celebration for Sunday night,” he says. The on-site mechanical bull is off-limits, too. “I don’t think they’d let us ride that during the tournament,” says Wheat Kings forward John Quenneville, author of the goal of the tournament, an in-close between-the-legs, backhand that he roofed, a goal that saw him trending on Twitter.
A ton of video games are played in the hotel rooms here and players watch a lot of hockey. Outside their rooms, the Huskies spent one afternoon bowling, and took a full day to visit the giant West Edmonton Mall, which Perron says is probably bigger than the small town they play for. “Actually,” the team captain says, laughing. “We had the day to rest and to reboot the computer—that’s the word that we’re using with the coach. He’s always telling us to reboot the computer, reset and get back to the base.”
The Knights, who bought themselves four days off after going 3–0 in the round robin, are trying to keep busy and stay loose. The day after they secured their berth in the final, they hopped on the team bus and made the three-hour drive to Banff. Or, as Michigan-born Parsons put it: “Banff, I think it’s called.” For American kids, the resort town in the Canadian Rockies is a new concept.
There, the Knights rode the gondola, and it was terrifying, if you ask NHL draft-eligible centreman Cliff Pu, of Toronto. “We were thinking if it broke down we probably would have died,” he says. “Negative thoughts all the way through.” But he did notice the breathtaking scenery, and they spotted an Elk. “I thought it was a caribou or something,” says Pu, who admitted his animal knowledge may be lacking.
Being the winning team is especially fun here, of course. Pu laughs when asked if he even remembers what it’s like to lose. London lost its last game nearly two months ago, on April Fool’s Day. “Honestly, we try not to think about losing,” he says. “It’s been real fun. And we’re just trying to keep having fun. The streak doesn’t matter anymore. It’s one more game in junior hockey for some of the guys, so we want to win it for them.”
Marner is hoping he’s one of those guys whose junior career ends in a couple days. To this point, three games in, the shifty kid with the brown hair and blonde wispy playoff beard you have to squint to see, has a tournament-leading 13 points. And yeah, that’s a little shocking, even to him.
Had you sat Marner down before the Memorial Cup and told him he’d be averaging 4.3 points per game, he would have laughed. “I probably would have said, ‘That’s funny, good joke,’” he says, grinning. Marner’s wearing a blue golf shirt and slacks on an off-day, and he just left the ice after a morning skate. No one player has been talked about more than him. And no line has created more hype than he and Tkachuk and Dvorak, who’ve combined for 29 round-robin points.
In his first game here, Marner had two goals and three assists against the host Rebels, a point shy of tying the Memorial Cup single-game record. He orchestrated a tic-tac-toe—faked a shot, then passed it to Tkachuk, who fed it to Aaron Berisha in front for a power-play goal. He fed a pass through two defencemen that Dvorak hammered home on the doorstep. He put a cross-ice pass from Dvorak top shelf and then calmly pumped his fist. Marner and his linemates made it look easy. “Some of the things they do on the ice are unbelievable,” says Parsons. “I honestly think that’s what makes me better, is them, in practice. You don’t see that from a lot of lines in games.”
Marner gets uncomfortable talking about his own success, so he’ll give all credit to “Chuckie” and “Devo.” All he really wants to talk about, anyway, is the end goal. He can’t help but think back to when he was 16, a rookie for the Knights, and they went 0-3 as the Memorial Cup hosts. “A lot of fans were disappointed,” he says, leaned over in his chair. “This year, we wanna turn it around. And I think everyone had a lot of doubt in us from Day 1 that we would ever be here. Now it’s up to us to take it home to our fans in London.”
So far, so good in Red Deer. “This has been the best,” he says. “Just hanging out with these guys here, it’s so special.”
Everything sort of slowed down after Connor Bleackley made the biggest pass of his career. Or at least, he made his best effort to make everything slow down.
In overtime against the WHL rival Wheat Kings, the Rebels forward saw teammate Evan Polei wide open, stick primed and ready for a one-timer. After Polei put it top-shelf, Bleackley didn’t race over to the pile-on. “For once, I kind of actually took everything in,” the 20-year-old says. “It was funny. The goal was scored in the corner, right beside our bench. But I peeled the other way. It’s one of those surreal moments. I just wanted to appreciate the moment. How many more of those will you get?” Turns out, not many. Bleackley’s junior career ends hours later when his Rebels lose to the Huskies.
That appreciation of the moment is a feeling not lost on anybody here. Not 17-year-old Wheat King Nolan Patrick, who could be the No. 1 pick in the NHL Draft next year. Not Red Deer native Jeff de Witt, who was too young to remember watching his first Rebels game, who “can’t even put into words” what it’s like to be playing for his hometown team. It’s not lost on the many draft eligible kids, who like Tkachuk realize “this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Huskies forward and Maple Leafs prospect Martins Dzierkals only found out what the Memorial Cup was two years ago, when his countryman, Latvian Edgars Kluda, won the MVP award. It doesn’t matter that it’s relatively new to him. “We really want the Cup, really bad,” says Dzierkals, eyes wide, after his Huskies earned a place in the final. He’s angling to become only the 22nd Latvian to play in the NHL. “For Rouyn-Noranda, it would be a big thing, huge thing. So we’re gonna do everything. We’re gonna put our bodies on the line.”
Dzierkals also has a plan to shut down his possible future teammate, Marner, in the final: “I’m gonna play physical on him,” he says. “I’ll try to make life hard for him.”
A day after that, Marner will hoist the CHL Player of the Year Award. A day later, still, he’ll be presented the Memorial Cup MVP trophy and raise the Memorial Cup over his head. He finishes the tournament with 14 points in four games. It would be a heck of a way to go out, to end his junior career.
If he does play his rookie season in the NHL next year, Marner recognizes it’ll be quite the adjustment, and not just on the ice. “When I was there, it was pretty crazy,” he says, with a small laugh and wide eyes, of the media and the attention that accompanies being a Maple Leaf. “I don’t think there’s any way to be ready. You just gotta go in and be nice to everyone. Doesn’t matter how the game goes, you gotta be ready to talk. That’s how it goes. It doesn’t matter how you’re feeling… you hold it back and not express your emotions.”
It sounds like the kid couldn’t be more ready to be a Toronto Maple Leaf.
About 20 minutes ago, Matthew Tkachuk scored the tournament-winning goal. He wheeled down the left wing, watched the Rebels defenceman stretch out on the ice and try to block his shot, but got his wrister up and over and through traffic that included Dvorak, who was going to the net. Tkachuk wasn’t sure it went in until he saw Huskies goalie Marchand look down at the ice, and he saw his bench clear, and he saw Dvorak yelling. That’s when Tkachuk started to fall over himself.
It’s the first OT goal of his season. “This is unreal,” he says. “Memorial Cup champions. Sixty teams, we’re the champ.” The son-of-Keith, owner of a spotty brown playoff beard and a brand new champions hat, still has that look in his eyes like he can’t believe what he just did. In the stands, his mom cried, and she never does that at hockey games. Keith had to remove his Knights hoody because he was sweating so much in overtime.
Marner is wheeling around the ice with a big grin on his face and a Go-Pro strapped to his chest, trying to get some good “footage.” “Here,” he says, pointing the camera upward, “I’ll give you a close-up.” That it could be his final junior game is “kinda hitting me now,” he says.
The Knights are all skating around, taking pictures, hugging and hoisting the trophy they just won. They don’t even know how they’ll properly celebrate this yet. “All I know is we’re gonna enjoy this right now,” says Parsons, who’ll be at the NHL Combine in less than a week. “There’s no other feeling like this.”