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KITCHENER, ONT. — About the only thing that went wrong for the Spokane Chiefs Sunday was their postgame celebration with the prized Memorial Cup.
When Chiefs captain Chris Bruton was presented with junior hockey's venerable trophy, after his team beat the host Kitchener Rangers 4-1 in the final, he went to hand it off to defenceman Jeff Glass and the bottom fell off the replica hardware (the real trophy is on display in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto) and slammed onto the ice.
"I guess the thing is old and has had some rough times with a few of the other teams, too," said Bruton, who was solid with two assists. "It broke in my hands. We'll get it fixed up and it'll be as good as new."
When the Chiefs entered their dressing room, a few of them tried to patch the trophy together. "Get some duct tape," yelled one of the Spokane players.
Spokane Chiefs captain Chris Bruton reacts as the Memorial Cup hits the ice after breaking in half while he was holding it following their win over the Kitchener Rangers. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
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"What a gong show," right winger Ryan Letts said.
Once the trophy was stabilized, the Chiefs posed for a celebratory photo, and the party was on. Letts flipped on the team's boom box and out blasted the victory song, Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, which they partied to after each of their three previous wins last week at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium.
The Chiefs' celebrity owners, Hall of Fame baseball player George Brett and his brother Bobby, had their second junior hockey championship to celebrate. It was Spokane's first win since Ray Whitney, Pat Falloon and Trevor Kidd keyed the Chiefs to the 1991 Memorial Cup.
This year's junior champs won with a suffocating defence-first strategy, superior special teams and standout goaltending by 19-year-old Dustin Tokarski of Watson, Sask.
The shot clock, which read 54-26 in favour of the Rangers when the final buzzer sounded, was not indicative of how well the Chiefs played. Still, Tokarski was solid and had to keep the puck out when the Rangers turned up the heat in the third period with a few goalmouth scrambles and 25 shots.
"I was in a zone out there, and if I wasn't, the defencemen were there to back me up," said Tokarski, chosen as the tournament's most valuable player and its top goalie and picked for the all-star team along with teammates Drayson Bowman, Mitch Wahl and Justin Falk. Kitchener's Justin Azevedo and Rangers defenceman Ben Shutron rounded out the all-star team.
The Chiefs' checking line of Tyler Johnson, Levko Koper and Justin McCrae also shut down the Rangers' explosive threesome of Azevedo, Matt Halishchuk and Nick Spaling, who had combined for six goals and 15 points in Kitchener's 9-0 semi-final win over the Belleville Bulls on Friday.
The Chiefs played with poise and exhibited little nerves playing in front of the boisterous capacity crowd of 6,807. The Chiefs' best defender was 17-year-old Jared Cowan of Allan, Sask. The 6-foot-5, 215-pound defenceman isn't eligible until the 2009 NHL entry draft and will be mentioned in the same breath as top prospects John Tavares of the Oshawa Generals and Victor Hedman of Sweden.
"He plays like he's been with this team five years," Letts said of Cowan, who scored an empty-net goal in the final minute.
The Rangers enjoyed a strong start. But after tough guy Brandon Mashinter banged in a rebound for an early 1-0 lead, they stopped moving the puck effectively up the ice, stopped skating and got into a game of chipping the puck into the neutral zone rather than making smart passing plays.
This played right into the hands of the Chiefs, who wanted to slow down the tempo. Spokane scored a power-play goal late in the first period when Judd Blackwater converted a sparkling pass from Ondrej Roman.
The Chiefs grabbed control of the game in the second period with goals from Bowman, the sixth of the tournament for the Carolina Hurricanes' prospect, and Glass on a power play. The Glass goal was controversial because the four on-ice officials missed the fact that Glass gloved the puck into his bench. Instead of a faceoff outside the Rangers' zone, it was held to the left of Kitchener goalie Josh Unice, and Glass scored right off the draw, won by Bruton.
