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The 2002 Memorial Cup.

Who will win the 2002 Memorial Cup?

  • The Guelph Storm

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • The Victoriaville Tigras

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Erie Otters

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • The Kootenay Ice

    Votes: 5 71.4%

  • Total voters
    7
  • Poll closed .
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TheRob

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The cup starts this weekend. The four teams involved are The Geulph Storm(OHL), The Victoriaville Tigras(QMJHL), The Kootenay Ice(WHL), and The Erie Otters(OHL).

Are there any TTPers interested in possibly the best hockey tournament going? These guys don't make a cent. They're playing for that possibility, but make nothing. All heart here boys and girls.

I believe all games are broadcast on CTVSN. Check your local listings.
 

TheRob

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TheRob chooses the Ice.

For the players on the Kootenay Ice who played in the Memorial Cup two years ago, this year's tournament in Guelph, Ont., represents unfinished business.

The Western Hockey League champions from Cranbrook, B.C., have five players remaining from the team that went 0-3 in Halifax in 2000. "We didn't have a good showing at all two years ago and we're a little bit embarrassed about that," said Kootenay winger Jarret Stoll. "There's five guys and the rest of the guys, too, want to go back there and start with one win and work our way forward."

The Ice play their first game of the Canadian Hockey League championship Sunday against the OHL champion Erie Otters.

The game will pit Stoll, the captain of the Canadian team that won a silver medal at the world championship in January, against Canadian teammates Brad Boyes and Carlo Colaiacovo.

Stoll, a Colorado Avalanche draft pick, right-winger Colin Sinclair, defencemen Cole Fischer and Richard Hamula and goaltender B.J. Boxma are the players left from the 2000 championship team. Fischer, 20, will compete in his third Memorial Cup after playing as a 16-year-old in the 1998 tournament for host Spokane.

The Ice, with two league titles and 57 playoff games in the last three years, come into the Memorial Cup with the edge in post-season experience, but head coach Ryan McGill doesn't think that means a whole lot.

"If you play your game, it doesn't matter how much experience you have," he said. "It's a tournament where you've just got to play your game and worry about yourself.

"You have to play what got you there and make things happen."

If the Ice were lacking one thing two years ago, it was a pure scorer. The team has that now after acquiring Duncan Milroy from the Swift Current Broncos in December.

Milroy, a candidate to make the next Canadian junior team, was the WHL's playoff MVP with 17 goals and 20 assists in 22 games.

The second-round draft pick of the Montreal Canadiens scored twice, including the winner in double overtime, in the sixth and final game Monday against the Red Deer Rebels, who were the defending WHL and Memorial Cup champions.

"He's playing so well right now," Stoll said of Milroy. "Everything he shoots goes in."

Kootenay gave up their then-captain, a top NHL draft prospect, another player and a first-round draft pick to get Milroy and retrieve Boxma.

"We had to pay for it, but you look where we are today as WHL champions, it was definitely worth it," said general manager Jeff Chynoweth.

Boxma is an intriguing member of the Kootenay lineup. He spent more than three years with the franchise and most of them in the shadow of Dan Blackburn, before he was dealt to Swift Current during the 2000-2001 season.

When it was clear Blackburn would not return from the New York Rangers last November, the Ice got him back in the Milroy trade and Boxma was finally able to step into the spotlight.

"Swift Current was a team rated in the top 10 and he was a 20-year-old goaltender and he didn't understand why they had traded him away," said McGill. "But in actual fact, we went after him because we knew him and because he had played unbelievable in the playoffs last year."

The addition of Milroy has given the Ice another big weapon in an offensive arsenal that includes Stoll, Sinclair, Slovak centre Marek Svatos and Czech winger Tomas Plihal, a San Jose Sharks draft pick.

"That's one thing going into a tournament, other teams may know a couple of guys to key on and that's where the other guys step up," said Stoll.

Cranbrook has a population of about 18,000. The Ice are in a small major junior hockey market isolated by the Kootenay Mountains in southeastern British Columbia.

Chynoweth says the franchise likes to think of itself as the Green Bay Packers of the WHL and has taken great pride in beating teams from bigger markets, especially the Calgary Hitmen.

"When we used to play Calgary, it was David and Goliath," said Chynoweth.

The Ice will be without centre Andy Taylor, who broke his ankle in Game 3 against Red Deer. Edmonton Oilers draft pick Shaun Norrie, acquired last September from the Calgary Hitmen, has moved from wing to centre.
 

TheRob

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Six votes and no replys. {sigh} This is worse than the motorsports forums.
 

TheRob

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The Ice win! The Ice win! The Ice win!

(May 26) GUELPH, Ont. (CP) - Bad memories from their last Memorial Cup experience made the Kootenay Ice champions this time around.

After the indignity of going 0-3 at the Canadian Hockey League championship in Halifax two years ago, the team had a coaching staff and five veteran players from that squad determined not to make the same mistakes again.

“We've got a unique dressing room,” said head coach Ryan McGill. “Our leadership group in there knew what was at stake.”

The Western Hockey League champions were the best prepared and least intimidated of the four teams at the start of the tournament and that paid dividends on Sunday, when the Ice dominated the exhausted Victoriaville Tigres 6-3.

The Ice gained confidence and gave themselves an advantage over the rest of the field by securing a berth in the final with wins in their first two games. Kootenay lost in a meaningless game to the Tigres on Wednesday and then rested while the remaining three teams wore each other out.

“It was huge,” said Colin Sinclair, who scored twice Sunday, of the days off. “You could tell Victoriaville was a little tired.

“That proved to be a key in the game.”

The Tigres played their third game in three days less than 24 hours after edging the Erie Otters 5-4 in overtime in Saturday's semifinal.

“Between the second and third period, the guys had a meeting and half of the guys had tears around their eyes,” said Victoriaville head coach Mario Durocher. “I just thought that the juice was out. Three games and three days, that was too much for us.”

The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League champions, by far the smallest team in the tournament, relied on offence and goaltending and on Sunday, the goaltending was not strong. Daniel Boisclair was pulled twice before he was sent back into the game with a minute and a half left.

The Tigres started the tournament terribly with two losses but then improved dramatically, beating Guelph 4-3 in a tiebreaker on Friday and scoring in the last five seconds to force overtime against Erie.

McGill didn't want his team following the same upswing. Based on the team's experience in Halifax, he told his players before the tournament they had to be strong out of the blocks, in order to avoid the gruelling schedule at the end of the week that the Tigres had.

“We didn't want to get into a semifinal battle when anything can happen,” he said. “You saw what happened last night with Quebec and Ontario.”

McGill spoke a lot during the week about minimizing distractions for his players, specifically media interviews. The Ice didn't come to the rink on two days and went on day trips to the Hockey Hall of Fame and Niagara Falls instead.

The Ice are not explosive on offence, though the Tigres made them look so on Sunday. But Kootenay proved the favourite hockey saying “Defence wins games” because throughout the tournament, the Ice played excellent team defence and made B.J. Boxma's life easier by protecting their goaltender better than any other team.

“We played solid in both ends of the ice,” said captain Jarret Stoll. “We buried our chances when we had to. We came back hard and backchecked pretty hard on them. They didn't have much room out there.”

The Ice, based in Cranbrook, B.C., in the Kootenay Mountains of southeastern British Columbia, captured the Western Hockey League's 15th Memorial Cup and made it back-to-back Cups for the WHL after the Red Deer Rebels won it in Regina last year.

The Rebels captured their title in much the same way - securing a spot in the final with two wins early in the week.

The Ice have been a elite team in the WHL since moving from Edmonton four years ago, but had to upset the Rebels in the WHL final to get here.

The players dumped a cooler of ice water over McGill in front of the team's dressing room following the game.

“We've had confidence all year long that we could get the job done and sometimes it didn't look like that in our record,” said McGill. “Once the playoffs began, the character and the resiliency of our dressing room came out.”

The Tigres mounted a last stand with two goals in the last two minutes on Sunday, but the game was already out of reach by then.

Along with Sinclair's pair, Igor Agarunov, Duncan Milroy and Shaun Norrie also scored for the Ice.

Captain Carl Mallette ended his five years in a Tigres' uniform with two goals on Sunday and Matthew Lombardi, the tournament's top scorer with two goals and seven assists, had one.

Tigres' overage defenceman Danny Groulx was named tournament MVP with two goals and five assists.

The tournament all-star team included forwards Sinclair, Lombardi, and Cory Pecker of the Erie Otters, Groulx and Guelph's Kevin Dallman on defence and Erie goaltender T.J. Aceti.

The 2002 Memorial Cup was an announced sellout at 45,144 tickets sold, but there were empty seats at every game at the Guelph Sports and Entertainment Centre.

The 2003 Memorial Cup will be hosted by the QMJHL in Quebec City.
The Ice win just like I suspected. I care. Nobody else does though.
 

Regs

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I care.

Anything that shows that TB knows his stuff is alright by me :rolleyes:

Who do you think will win the Memorial Cup next year?

~TB.
 
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