NO MEMORIAL CUP FOR THE 67’S
OHL team was enjoying a dominant season but now is denied a shot at championship
Brad Shaw closed out his Ontario Hockey League career with the Ottawa 67’s by lifting the Memorial Cup over his head in his hometown of Kitchener.
The club’s captain had been playing with a shoulder injury that spring, but, at that particular moment in 1984, nothing was going to stop Shaw from celebrating what has turned out to be one of the highlights of his hockey career. That’s why he knows the graduates on this year’s edition of the 67’s will be left with a feeling that there’s unfinished business.
Monday night, the Canadian Hockey League — governing body of the Western Hockey League, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the OHL — decided to cancel the playoffs and the Memorial Cup set for May 21 to 31 in Kelowna, B.C. It was the right decision because of the worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus.
Shaw, 55, now a well-respected associate coach with the National Hockey League’s Columbus Blue Jackets, knows this will be difficult for those 67’s players, but the leagues weren’t left with much choice because they don’t have the option of playing into the summer. There were 11 rookies in Shaw’s first year with the 67’s and the core of that group remained together under Hockey Hall of Fame coach and general manager Brian Kilrea.
“If you’re sitting on a team, where you’re poised and you feel like you have a pretty good chance, that’s still one of the greatest memories of my hockey career is the Memorial Cup,” Shaw said Tuesday from his Columbus home. “It was maybe enhanced a little bit because it was in my hometown and maybe more so because Killer hadn’t won yet and he had already established himself as one of the great junior coaches, so we had that to work for as well.
“That experience, and that weeklong tournament, is something I’ll never forget. It’s something that, whether you win or lose, it’s a heck of a thing to go through and to triumph at the end was awesome. Just to experience was a great event.”
There aren’t guarantees in life, but the 67’s had as good a shot as any CHL team of winning the Memorial Cup this spring. Their record was 50-11-1 in the 62 games they played. They had already locked up a playoff spot when action was halted on March 12 with six games left on their regular-season schedule.
André Tourigny, the 67’s head coach and vice-president of hockey operations, said after Monday’s announcement that he felt badly for graduating players because they wouldn’t get to put on the Barber Poles jersey again and they would never know if this season’s team was good enough to win the Memorial Cup.
Think about it: This is the first time since 1919 that this championship won’t be awarded.
Shaw still shares a special bond with the 67’s teammates he won the championship with, including the likes of Bruce Cassidy, Darren Pang, Gary Roberts, Mark Paterson and Adam Creighton. Shaw, later an Ottawa Senators captain, rhymed off the names of those teammates as if it was yesterday.
“(You feel for) the guys who have worked their way up and got to prominent places on the team because that’s part of the process in junior,” Shaw said. “Those guys, three months ago, were gearing everything towards a really good run in May and having a really good shot on a Sunday afternoon of playing for the Memorial Cup — and that gets squashed with this decision.
“That’s what’s really tough for these teams because they were really gearing up and licking their chops, so to speak, because of what the playoffs held for them. For the guys that have gone through this, it will be a really bitter pill and it’s just unfortunate, but it’s unfortunate for every event ... put on the back burner or cancelled.
“We’re in such unprecedented times you hope we’re making the right decisions because getting to the end of this with the fewest possible casualties is the goal. If postponing these events is the way it has be, you just have to react to it the right way.”
The 67’s defeated the Kitchener Rangers 7-2 in the Memorial Cup final in 1984. Mario Lemieux played in that tournament with the QMJHL’s Laval Voisins and the 67’s had knocked off the Kitchener Rangers in the OHL final in five games to advance.
“When you win it, I remember thinking, ‘I wonder if this will be the greatest thing that ever happens in my hockey career,’ because you never know how long you’re going to play,” said Shaw, who suited up for 377 games as an NHL defenceman. “I hadn’t signed a contract at that time. My rights were traded from Detroit to Hartford that week.
“To hold that trophy in my hometown, as a captain, I’ll never forget it. I had a bum shoulder and I could barely raise my right shoulder. so I had a tough time lifting it, but that moment will never leave my memory bank.”
That’s what’s really tough for these teams ... For the guys that have gone through this, it will be a really bitter pill.