It had been a decade since an Eastern Conference team hoisted the J. Ross Robertson Cup.
Not since 2006 in fact, when the Peterborough Petes swept the London Knights, led by coach Dick Todd and forward Daniel Ryder. So now that the Oshawa Generals have done it, does it perhaps signal a shift in power back to the East?
Indeed, after a lengthy run, the traditional Western Conference powerhouses may have finally surrendered control to their Eastern counterparts.
The notion of League domination by a particular conference is not new, nor is it unique to junior hockey. The same phenomenon exists at the NHL level to a large extent, with six of the last nine post-lockout Stanley Cup champions coming out of the West, and in the CFL, where seven of the last ten Grey Cup winners were western, and in the NBA as well, where ten of the past 15 champions have emerged from the West.
The rationale for this is fairly straightforward: a schedule heavily weighted along geographical lines and, by virtue of this, the guiding hand of Darwinian selection, a highly contagious kill or be killed mindset, one that permeates the psychology of the winningest franchises, year after year, Cup after Cup, like the Chicago Blackhawks, the San Antonio Spurs and the London Knights. In each case there are a handful of very good Conference competitors who are striving, at every level of their organizations, to dethrone the champion on a yearly basis. In the OHL, the Guelph Storm and Kitchener Rangers come to mind, and when it's not them it's the Windsor Spitfires, the Owen Sound Attack, the Erie Otters, or the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, banging on the palace gates.
The Greyhounds, ranked as the CHL's best team by the end of the 2014-15 season, having supplanted Oshawa for said top spot, fueled misguided Memorial Cup predictions by easily dispatching last year's OHL champion, the Guelph Storm, a team good enough by most yardsticks, but merely a shadow of their former selves, in the Western Conference semifinals.
In the other western semi, the Otters, powered by Connor McDavid for the last time, rolled decisively over London, though it is worth noting that the Knights were a diminished club, having jettisoned Dakota Mermis and Michael McCarron to the Generals at the trade deadline, and were rolling the dice in net with a project goaltender, Michael Giugovas, a questionable talent who had been test driven by a couple of Eastern Conference teams already, this after the Knights traded a blue chip goaltending prospect in Liam Herbst to the Ottawa 67's at the 2014 trade deadline.
So when Erie faced the Sault, it was a like-versus-like scenario. Two very gifted offensive teams, lethal in fact, who would go at each other with every weapon in their arsenals. The series was entertaining to watch, with a half dozen enticing storylines, none more fascinating perhaps than the highly anticipated clash between the Greyhounds' Darnell Nurse and the Otters' McDavid, the one a star defenseman with the heady responsibility of containing the other, a future best centreman in the world, in a battle between future Edmonton Oilers teammates.
But the series was not physical, nor was it particularly defensive, and these were surprising observations considering the recent history of Wayne Gretzky Trophy battles. One side had to succumb and, in the end, it was the Greyhounds, despite having rented the services of a pair of NHL-destined players in former Peterborough Petes' mainstay Nick Ritchie, and former Sarnia Sting defenceman Anthony DeAngelo.
Neither challenger would have faired very well against the Generals, and one could argue that neither the Otters nor the Greyhounds would have managed any better against the Eastern Conference finalists, the rugged and suffocating North Bay Battalion.
So the argument that a shift in power is underway is compelling, with the continued rise of Travis Konecny and the Ottawa 67's; a Niagara Icedogs franchise reinvigorated by a $55-million Meridian Centre; a new Hamilton Bulldogs club with strong ownership; and a North Bay Battalion squad being viewed increasingly as perennial contenders. Dare we add: Oshawa Generals, defending Memorial Cup champions, to that list?
We already saw how the Battalion swept aside the Generals in the 2013-14 Eastern Conference Championship Series, and how the Generals, namely general manager Roger Hunt, responded by bulking his squad up considerably, a punishing combination of both size and skill, in preparation to do battle with the Battalion this year. This maneuver did not go unnoticed by other Eastern Conference coaches and managers, who are now scrambling to shape their squads in the image of the Generals and Battalion, with the hope of surpassing them if either team should suffer a misstep.
In the Eastern Conference the gauntlet has been thrown down.
And that's how the West will be won.
