Despite history, Hay doesn’t sneeze at Chiefs’ chances

Here the Spokane Chiefs have barely had time to get the trophy repaired and already they’re being summoned to begin work on winning another one.

The Western Hockey League’s 2008-09 season starts for the Chiefs on Thursday evening in Cranbrook, British Columbia, a mere 116 days after they returned bleary-eyed from Kitchener, Ontario, with a Memorial Cup that had come apart in their hands, much as the competition had. So quick has been the turnaround that the players may still be scratching out of reflex where their playoff beards once grew.

But start anew they must, so this must be the time to launch that grand old argument: Is it harder to get to the top, or to stay there?

You know what the percentages say. Since the championship of major junior hockey was expanded into its current four-team fire drill 26 years ago, only two teams – the Medicine Hat Tigers of 1987 and ’88 and the Kamloops Blazers of ’94 and ’95 – have won back-to-back Cups. These are what amount to dynasties when the talent turns over in four years or less.

But that math doesn’t make it unanimous.

“Sometimes I think it’s harder to win the first time,” said Don Hay, “than it is repeating.”

Certainly there are 10 WHL franchises out there that wouldn’t disagree with Vancouver’s veteran coach based on their own experience alone. But Hay does have the unique perspective of having been behind the bench for those Kamloops runs, both the climb to the summit and the subsequent campout.

Of course, his view may be skewed a bit. The Blazers had also won the Memorial Cup in 1992, so by the time the tournament rolled into Kamloops in 1995 they probably thought of it as their birthright.

“Well, I think the main thing for us in repeating,” Hay allowed, “was that we were hosting.

“We were ranked No. 1 right from the start of the season. We had a lot of veteran players back, guys who wanted to take on that type of pressure and handled it well. And we were able to defend it in front of our home fans. That’s a pretty good combination.”

And Spokane?

Veteran players back? Check.

Willingness to take on the pressure of repeating? You’d have to think so.

Defending it in front of the home fans? Not unless those good folks plan on cashing out before the banks collapse and migrating en masse to Rimouski, Quebec.

Still, location might actually be the least of it. It certainly seemed incidental to the Chiefs last May when they twice beat the heavily hyped hosts in Kitchener. More important is the talent, the toughness to sustain the long playoff slog and the experience of having done it.

Kamloops, like all junior teams, lost its three 20-year-olds off the ’94 Cup team, plus a pair of 100-point 19-year-olds, but had younger players developed in a Petri dish of winning. Medicine Hat, in ’88, returned five of its top six scorers and its goaltender. Likewise, these Chiefs – unless there’s a tectonic personnel shift involving a player in an NHL camp – will feature the bulk of its Memorial Cup core, unlike the 1991 Spokane champions that lost six of the team’s top seven scorers and the hot playoff goalie.

“You need those veteran players because everybody’s gunning for you,” Hay said. “Everybody wants to beat the Memorial Cup champs and you get everybody’s best shot, even the lower teams. Our players enjoyed that challenge of having to play hard every night.”

It’s not unreasonable to think that there might be some letdown, too, or a diminished hunger. But Hay said that wasn’t the case in Kamloops that year – just one reason he thinks the 1995 team was better than the ’94s.

“We didn’t have a lull,” he said.

That’s not to say they didn’t have an emergency.

After winning 52 regular-season games and easing through the Western Division playoffs, the Blazers were stunned by Eastern champ Brandon in the first two games of the WHL finals – in Kamloops. Heading to Brandon for three games, Hay took the bold step of benching goalie Rod Branch and inserting 16-year-old Randy Petruk – who promptly won the last four games of the WHL series and four at home in the Memorial Cup.

“Our goaltending hadn’t been as good – we had a question mark there,” Hay said. “I just knew it was the right move to make. We had a good feeling about Randy. It was the right move at the right time.”

Whether the Chiefs have to do anything quite so drastic remains to be seen, but Hay likes their starting point.

“I know they lost three very good 20-year-olds, but I think they have other players ready to step up and take those roles,” he said. “They didn’t lose much on defense and they have a real solid goaltender – so that’s the makings of being able to defend.

“Is it hard to motivate guys the second time around? I don’t think so. They’ve enjoyed what they earned and they’ll want to do it again.”