Memorial Cup wrap-up

Just dumping a collection of mental Post-It notes to the blog here after a week spent watching the Memorial Cup....

• the best team won. The (narrowly) second-best team finished 2nd. The third-best team finished 3rd, and the 4th-best team finished 4th. That doesn't happen every time, but it did this year. I don't think there was a lot separating Halifax from Portland but the Mooseheads won both their meetings at the tournament and outscored Portland 13-8. It is difficult to make any case but that Halifax was the better team.

• that Final game was one of the best hockey games I've seen this year. Portland seemed a little unprepared in the first period (nerves?) and it cost them; in the 2nd and 3rd periods the game was quite even and I would say Portland was actually the better team for large portions of those two periods. But the first period killed them, being down 3-0 after 20 minutes (and still down 3-0 halfway through the second period) made a comeback very difficult against a top team like the Mooseheads. At 5-2 I was sure it was over but Portland hung in there and made a white-knuckle finish out of it, making it 5-4 with over a minute left to play yet.

• the much-hyped Jones/MacKinnon/Drouin "battle of the top three prospects" certainly lived up to its billing. In the two head-to-head games between the three, Jones had two goals (though he was also a -1) while MacKinnon had NINE points (6 goals, 3 assists) and Drouin had six points (1g, 5a) in the two games. MacKinnon and Drouin were unstoppable in the Final and are pretty much the main reason that the Memorial Cup is on the East coast today and not the West one. So as far as the head-to-head thing goes, MacKinnon won, hands-down. He played his best hockey of the year on the biggest stage against the toughest competition. 

• that said, does it matter? Will it change anything? The Colorado Avalanche's opinion is the only one that matters when it comes to determining which of Jones or MacKinnon (or Drouin!) goes #1 overall in the NHL draft. I think when you look at Colorado's roster there are several good young forwards there already (Duchene, Landeskog, O'Reilly, etc), including a couple who are centermen. Then you look at their defence and it's terrible - probably the reason they were dead last in the West. They need defencemen badly, and a franchise defenceman like Jones is, IMO anyway, too good for them to pass up given their organizational needs. There's also the P.R. aspect, they can sell Jones as a "native son" since he partially grew up in Denver and took up hockey there. That is a minor thing in the overall picture, but it's there and it becomes a bigger factor if you have two players you consider equal in all the on-ice measurables. So in my view, no matter how good MacKinnon played yesterday, Jones will still go #1 as long as it's Colorado doing the picking. 

• it is safe to say that after watching Jones, MacKinnon, and Drouin, this year was a very, very good year to be one of the three worst teams in the NHL. Even at #3, Tampa Bay will get the one that the other two teams didn't want - and they'll still get a guy who could be the best player when the careers are all said and done. 

• I'm a little surprised by the level of dislike/hate for Portland there seems to be among WHL fans. I always, always root for the WHL champion at the Memorial Cup, even when it's one of my team's hated rivals (in recent years - Edmonton, Kootenay, Medicine Hat!) but I do understand when people can't bring themselves to cheer for a "hated rival". No judgement here. What surprises me though is the number of people who want them to fail because of the sanctions/cheating/whatever you want to call it situation. The way I see it, the people who deserve the scorn there are only the ones involved in the misdoings - namely, Mike Johnston and anyone else who was involved in what they did....and there is no evidence presented (publicly anyway) that anyone other than Johnston was involved. Johnston and the organization were severely punished for what they did. I don't see the logic in hoping the innocent parties in all this - the players - fail. Just me I guess....like I said, no judgement on people who see it differently, I just don't understand the thinking is all.

• the early favorite for the 2014 Memorial Cup, I think, has to be the host London Knights. London won the OHL title this year and they did that with only 2 overagers and only 4 19 year olds. In other words, they may lose very few players off this championship team heading into next year - and their great group of 2013 draft prospects - Domi, Horvat, Zadorov, Elie, Mermis - will be a year older and better. They should contend for the OHL title again next year and even if they don't win it, they'll still be a very, very good host team at the Memorial Cup itself.

• and with that we arrive at the Saskatoon Blades, this year's host. Without trying to piss off Saskatoon fans, I think the Blades' season cannot be called anything but a huge disappointment. I think that 18 game winning streak in February covered up a lot of flaws on this team by moving them up the standings - but their average opponent in those 18 wins was a .459 team and 10 of those 18 were against teams that missed the playoffs. Only three were against teams that had home ice in the first round of the playoffs. That stretch was misleading, padded numbers against mostly weak competition. I think this was a team with a lot of good individual talent that never really meshed together and were carried a lot by a very strong goaltender. Without Makarov and the winning streak (which, incidentally, he played every game of), I think this is a non-playoff team. They did play reasonably well at the Memorial Cup, they didn't get blown out until the tiebreaker loss, and they were the only team at the tournament to beat Halifax. But they also had the benefit of 7 weeks of rest heading into the Memorial Cup too. It was fresh legs against tired ones in those games, that has to count for something. 

• Saskatoon has paid a big price to try to contend this year and in 2011 (when they traded for Brayden Schenn). They have not had a first round WHL bantam draft pick since 2009 (for accuracy, they did have a 1st rounder in 2010, but they traded the player 8 months later in the Schenn deal) and won't have one again until 2016. To show for that they have a 2nd round exit (via sweep) in 2011 and a 1st round sweep in both 2012 and this year, with a 1-3 Memorial Cup. So, they are 1-15 in their last 16 post-season games. I would be very surprised if Lorne Molleken retains his job - either via quitting or being dismissed - in Saskatoon after those kind of results. It may not be entirely his fault but he is the general here, he made the decisions and paid the very high prices for players that he paid. So the buck stops at his desk. I'm sure he knew and accepted that risk when he made the deals too.

• Last thought: will people be tempted to pay those kind of prices again? (Of course they will!)