On Friday night, the Saint John Sea Dogs and Erie Otters face off at the Mastercard Memorial Cup and the winner will take on the Windsor Spitfires in the final on Sunday. Here’s hoping it’s a closer game than the 12-5 thumping the Otters put on the Sea Dogs in the round robin.
Three of the six round-robin games this year were blowouts decided by six goals or more. The other two were Seattle’s losses to Windsor (7-1) and Saint John (7-0). These results have led back to a familiar question we hear around the Memorial Cup in most years: does the tournament need a new format?
Most often this question is brought up in relation to the host team, which gets an automatic bye into the tournament no matter how they do in their own league. The selection committee that chooses the host factors in how competitive a team is expected to be to avoid any total misfits.
This year’s host Windsor was eliminated in the first round of the OHL playoffs and had an unprecedented 44 days off between then and the opener. That initially brought up the host city debate again, although Windsor didn’t exactly have an easy playoff opponent in London, which was a legit contender for the OHL crown itself. And besides, the Spitfires just finished 3-0 in round-robin play and clinched a spot in Sunday’s final.
“I think it’s essential,” Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino said about having a set host. “What we see on TV is just what happens during the course of the game, but there’s so much more that goes into it. The Hall of Fame has an exhibit here, there’s a fan fest that has community school elements to it, they’ve set up the hockey house and the auxiliary event that surrounds what happens here in the main rink is a big part of what the Memorial Cup is all about.
“So in terms of having a host I think you need the time to be able to plan those things and execute those things properly so it gives the host element of this tournament some staying power.”
While Windsor is a success this season, that hasn’t always been the case with the host. In 2013, the Saskatoon Blades were swept out of the first round of the WHL playoffs, but got to the tie-breaker game, which they lost 6-1. In 2014, London got in despite losing in the second round of the OHL playoffs, and proceeded to score just four goals in three losses. In 1990, the Dukes of Hamilton were set to host, but were removed after winning just 11 games in the regular season. The OHL runner-up Kitchener Rangers took their place.
Attendance is also a factor, as the host city tends to draw better than a game involving a couple of out-of-town teams. This year, Windsor drew three of the four highest attendances so far. Even in 2014 when London was blown out of the water, they drew the only sellouts of the tournament outside of the final.
This isn’t the year to harp on an automatic host-city bid, but with the 100th Memorial Cup coming up next season — and since this is a discussion that comes up most years — we’ll present a few fun options for potential format changes in the future. For each of these, a single city would still play host, but their junior team wouldn’t always get an automatic bid.
Three league champions, plus top-point team from CHL regular season
Pros: This sticks with the current four-team format, so you could continue with a round robin where each team meets once. The first-place team gets a bye to the final, while Nos. 2 and 3 play in the semifinal. If the team with the most points in the CHL during the regular season already qualified as a league champ, the bid would go to the next-highest team.
Cons: The team that qualifies for their regular-season success could still get in after being eliminated early in their league playoffs, which is something we’d be trying to avoid by getting rid of the host bid. We could instead choose to go with the team went the furthest in the playoffs without winning a league title that had the most points in the regular season.
Champion and finalist from each league’s playoffs
Pros: You get the best of the best teams at the right time of the season, with everyone more or less getting the same down time between league championship and the start of the Memorial Cup.
Cons: With six entries, a round-robin setup would extend the tournament and then we’d assume you’d want the top-four qualifiers to form an easy playoff. This format is starting to look too long, and if the host city is not represented, what’s the appetite to attend all these games?
Three league champions, three finalists, a host, and team with most regular-season points
Pros: Like above, you get all the best teams at their height, plus you get a team that was solid all season that may have drawn a mismatch in the playoffs. By including a host, the interest level would remain high.
Cons: What would the format be? An eight-team round robin is too messy and long, and if you split them up into two divisions, the two league champions that are put together would be at a disadvantage. You could do an eight-team single elimination play down, but then how do you set the rankings? Again, the league champions ranked two and three would be at a disadvantage to the league champion that gets the one-seed and, theoretically, the easier road.
Top 16 elimination: committee ranks the best CHL teams
Pros: In this setup the league champions would receive automatic bids, but maybe not the top-three seeds. As is the case in college sports with many different conferences, a committee of experts (or maybe coaches) would rank the best 16 teams across the CHL. In this case, the Mastercard Memorial Cup would be a March Madness-style single-elimination bracket showdown. By maintaining a priority to weigh the potential success of a host team when selecting a host, there’s a high probability that city’s team will also be involved. And by using a bracket, it encourages fan involvement and contests.
Cons: By leaving the qualifiers and their seedings in the hands of a panel, we’re bound to get disputes over who was left out, or who was unfairly ranked. The NCAA gets this kind of disagreement in their men’s basketball tournament all the time. And with a large single-elimination event like this, you increase the likelihood that the final does not involve the two best teams.
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