Hockey Cup Quest History 101:

This is in todays Morning Star Newspaper:

Hockey Cup quest history 101

By Kevin Mitchell - Vernon Morning Star
Published: May 03, 2009

Like most hockey people, colourful cigar-chomping Vernon Laker general manager and owner Mel Lis was somewhat superstitious on game day.
And when his bad luck turned into good fortune for the Lakers at the 1991 Centennial Cup in Sudbury, Ont., he decided to stay put in the B.C. Junior Hockey League champion’s dressing room during the final.
“Our dressing room joined with another dressing room which was used by the university and after the first period I went in and used the bathroom,” recalled Lis.
“When I came out, the door was locked. I kicked on the door and that didn’t work so I made the best of it and cleaned the place up. I missed the second period and we scored a few goals to take the lead so I just stayed in there for the third period too. I wasn’t going to take any chances and change our luck.”
Laker leg-splitting goalie Murray Caton, who led the Lakers to an 8-4 final win over the Sudbury Cubs, said Lis had just finished addressing the team with words of inspiration.
“Mel would always come in the dressing room in important games and say, ‘Come on boys, let’s win it.’ I guess he went to the washroom and we forget about him. He mopped the floor and had the place cleaned up nice and a stogie lit up. He couldn’t hear the cheering from in there, but he could hear the announcer so he knew we were scoring goals.”
That sitcom-like story is just one of a million memories from those vying for the prestigious Centennial Cup, which in 1996, became known as the Royal Bank Cup.
The Vernon Vipers start writing their own RBC history today when they face the Summerside Western Capitals in Victoria. It’s a ‘Drive For Five’ for Mark Ferner’s ultra-talented bunch.
The popular Lis watched his club win their other national title the year before on home ice, using a drama-jammed 6-5 overtime win over the B.C. champion New Westminster Royals, who had sleepwalked to the league crown at 52-3-4.
Calgary’s Cam Sylven scored the OT goal which sent an overflow Vernon crowd of close to 3,000 into a frenzy on an historic night where TSN broadcast their first Cup final with Howie Meeker as colour analyst.
“Cam was our third-line centre and he had about 40 breakaways that year and scored on two of them,” laughed Laker coach Eddie Johnstone, a former NHL winger who went on to coach eight years in minor pro. “We should have won it in regulation. Davey Oliver (Oiler draft) and Duane Dennis (Oiler farmhand) could have won it three times in the last three, four minutes.”
The Lakers trailed John Olver’s Royals 5-2 after two periods and opened the third period killing a major penalty assessed goalie Dean Kuntz.
Johnstone sensed Kuntz had lost his focus and replaced him with Caton, then a rookie. The Lakers responded with an early shorthanded goal to ignite the miraculous comeback.
“Nobody gave us a hope of beating New West,” said Caton. “They had a powerhouse. They dominated us and everybody all year and they were still the class of the tournament. We were a little down after the second period, but we had a lot of veterans on the team who kept us up. Eddie always had a way of making you believe you could always win any game.”
An architect of four championships in six years, Terry Simpson is the winningest coach in the 38-year Centennial/Royal Bank Cup history. He guided the Prince Albert Raiders to titles in 1977, ‘79 and ‘82, all on home ice, and won the ‘81 Cup in Halifax.
Simpson was an assistant coach with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim when I talked hockey with him in 2001. He credited a strong Raider network for the success.
“You don’t win national championships without great players and to get that far you have to have depth,” said Simpson. “We had the odd player (James Patrick and Dave Tippett were two) who was a cut above, but we won mainly with our depth.
“We had a solid organization. Our scouting staff was good and to win that consistently, it has to come within the strength of the organization.Winning is a tough thing to grasp and sometimes you take it for granted. We’d been along the trail and that experience reinforces that you are probably doing some of the right things to get there.”
Simpson said the Raiders’ high standards as a Junior A organization allowed the team to claim a Memorial Cup in ’85, only three years after joining the Major Junior Western Hockey League.
Brent Sutter, who was blessed with good coaching as a minor hockey player in the tiny farm community of Viking, Alta., jumpstarted a Cup-dotted career by boosting the Red Deer Rustlers to a Centennial Cup victory in 1980 in North York, Ont. He was tourney MVP playing on a team with his twin brothers Ron and Rich.
“We had a good hockey club and we lost only nine games all year and lost once in the playoffs,” Sutter told me in the fall of 2001, from his hotel room in Prince George, where his WHL Red Deer Rebels were preparing to meet the Cougars.
“We could have competed in Tier 1 that year. We had a big team. Our smallest defenceman was Randy Moller and he was 6-foot-2. It was a really good experience. We had a reunion five years after and I still keep in touch with some of the guys.”
Sutter had joined the Rustlers as a 15-year-old and he credits Red Deer coach John Chapman, who “taught me a lot about hockey and life.”
Former Pittsburgh Penguin draft Troy Mick was an assistant coach with the ‘96 champion Vernon Vipers and then guided the Vipers to the ‘99 title after a superb 52-win season.
“Every morning I look at that ring (from ‘99) and think what an awesome, thrill, what an awesome ride,” said Mick, who went on to coach in Portland and Kamloops.
“There was big-time determination on that team. There was no way we weren’t going to the Royal Bank Cup. We had the tournament poster up in our dressing room in September and our vets were a key in keeping the guys calm at the tournament.”
Mick said a close bond kept the Snakes in sync all year.
“We had three No. 1 lines, seven quality defencemen and two great goaltenders. All the guys went to the wall for one another and got along.”