RED DEER — The puck arrived in difficult-to-handle fashion, about 10 inches off the ice in front of the Brandon Wheat Kings net. In one motion, 20-year-old Swedish winger Daniel Bernhardt of the London Knights knocked it down and swept it upwards into the goal, a high-skill play that probably wasn’t that surprising coming from a fourth-round draft pick of the New York Rangers.
Except we rarely get to see it from Bernhardt. Actually, we rarely get to see Bernhardt period, as he’s buried beneath a load of high-end talent on the London roster. The same goes for forward Kole Sherwood, who was signed as a free agent to an entry-level deal by the Columbus Blue Jackets last summer, and now can’t even squeeze his way into the London lineup.
Bernhardt’s goal against the Wheaties was London’s ninth of the evening in a 9-1 laugher over the WHL champions, the latest example of depth and dominance from an OHL squad that has now won 15 consecutive post-season games and is threatening to turn this Mastercard Memorial Cup tournament into a one-team story.
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In two easy wins over WHL teams, including the host Red Deer Rebels, the Knights have now scored 15 goals, obliterating any sense that teams from the west can play with them. It’s going to be left to the QMJHL champion Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, who came into this event as the CHL’s No.-1 ranked, to demonstrate they can do any better Tuesday night in the final round-robin assignment for both clubs.
While everything went right for London on Monday night at the Enmax Centrium while everything was going wrong for Brandon, it was still amazing to see the Knights get offence not only from the spectacular No. 1 line of Mitch Marner, Christian Dvorak and Matthew Tkachuk, but from the second, third and fourth lines as well. By the third period, Brandon had replaced starting goalie Jordan Papirny, and the game was so one-sided that London backup Brendan Burke got a chance to play in relief of starting netminder Tyler Parsons.
The Knights are going to have to close this deal before they can make a claim to anything, and the 2014 Guelph Storm could tell them how a Memorial Cup can be ripped from your grasp on the final day of the competition when all signs indicate you’re the team that should win.
But as we stand, the Knights are looking at least as dominant as the 2010 Memorial Cup champion Windsor Spitfires, a team that won its three round-robin games over Brandon, Calgary and Moncton by a combined 19-8 score, then destroyed Brandon in the championship game 9-1.
That Windsor team had future NHLers like Taylor Hall, Adam Henrique, Ryan Ellis and Cam Fowler in the lineup. Henrique and Ellis had already been selected in the NHL draft, while Hall would go No. 1 the month after that year’s Memorial Cup to the Edmonton Oilers, and Fowler was taken by Anaheim with the 12th overall pick. Forward Justin Shugg and goalie Phillip Grubauer later went in the fourth round to Carolina and Washington, respectively.
London—and here’s what may really set this team apart—could have six of its players go in the first three rounds next month in Buffalo. Forward Matthew Tkachuk and defenceman Olli Juolevi are likely top-10 picks and winger Max Jones is expected to go somewhere before the 20th selection. Parsons was the No. 3 goalie in the final North American rankings put out by NHL Central Scouting and, depending on how NHL teams jump on netminding at this draft, could go in the second round. Speedy forward Cliff Pu and defenceman Victor Mete, meanwhile, are expected to go somewhere in the third round.
So that’s the starting goalie, three of the top-six forwards and two of London’s top-four D-men, all still draft eligible and expected to be picked in the top 100 selections of a very good draft. In other words, not only is this an excellent and marvelously skilled Knights team, it’s a very young club, as well.
Last year’s champion Oshawa Generals, by comparison, was a veteran laden team that didn’t have a player taken in the first two rounds of the 2015 NHL Draft. The Edmonton Oil Kings upset Guelph to win in 2014 with a team that saw winger Brett Pollock selected in the second round the following month, and then not another player until defenceman Dysin Mayo went in the fifth.
The Knights, then, aren’t just dominating this tournament. They’re expected to dominate next month’s draft, as well.
The Marner-Dvorak-Tkachuk line, meanwhile, went into the Brandon game with a combined 473 scoring points this season, including 119 in the OHL playoffs and 10 points against Red Deer in a 6-2 London win to open the tournament on Friday.
Against Brandon, Wheat Kings coach Kelly McCrimmon wanted to match the defence pairing of captain Macoy Erkamps and star blueliner Ivan Provorov against the Marner line, but when Knights coach Dale Hunter out-maneuvered McCrimmon early, Kale Clague was caught out against the explosive London forward unit and took a hooking penalty on Dvorak at 3:27 of the first period.
Dvorak scored on assists from Tkachuk and Marner just 1:08 later, and by the end of the first period the score was already 4-0 for the Knights. The Marner line again ended up with 10 points on the night, a reminder of what McCrimmon had said hours earlier before the game when he detailed how his team would try to stop that line. “But I’m sure everyone says the same thing before they play them,” he’d said ruefully.
Could the Knights still lose this? Of course they could.
All it takes is a hot goalie, and Papirny, Rouyn-Noranda’s Chase Marchand and Red Deer’s Rylan Toth all have the ability to stone an opposing team and steal a game for their squad. Injuries always can play a role, and Tkachuk is still limping around on a high-ankle sprain suffered against Niagara in the OHL final.
Red Deer, meanwhile, had chances to score early against London in the tournament opener but couldn’t connect, and we have yet to see how the Knights might react if they fell behind by a goal or two. The Huskies, for example, romped past Brandon in their Memorial Cup opener and were up 2-0 against Red Deer early, but then ended up surrendering five straight goals while looking rattled as the Rebels took it to them.
Teams tend to look different, after all, when everything isn’t going their way.
So far, everything has gone London’s way. Up 2-0 in the first period on Monday night, Wheat Kings centre Tim McGauley stormed in on Parsons on a shorthanded breakaway and beat the London netminder with a nifty backhand move. Unfortunately for the WHL champs, the puck hit the crossbar and stayed out, and soon after the Knights scored again to turn what might have been a 2-1 game into a commanding 3-0 lead.
This is a Knights team that has resources it hasn’t yet had to use. We’ll see if any of the other teams can force them to play all their cards in pursuit of this year’s Memorial Cup title.