The ICE will be on a plane in about an hour and will arrive in Cranbrook sometime after 1pm.
Making it to the Memorial Cup and not winnng the trophy is a bitter sweet way to end a hockey season and that's why it's the toughest hockey championship to win.
To the fans, don't let this spoil what an amazing run the ICE had this season.
The ICE are WHL Champions and the players/coaches/management should be proud.
This was the first Memorial Cup that the ICE have played in that I felt anyone was capable of winning. The quality of the teams was top notch. You can do this week of hockey 4 times and end up with 4 different winners. All 3 leagues should be proud of the quality of coaching and players that is be presented in their leagues.
The ICE were getting closer to how they played in the WHL Playoffs but never reached that level of play. The ICE played 5 games in 7 days and in the semifinal played a team with 10 19-year-olds and their size, strength, depth and getting an early lead presented a tough challenge for the ICE.
On the radio station today you'll be hearing comments on the news and sports from Jeff Chynoweth, Kris Knoblauch and Todd Johnson. They are disppointed in the result but are proud on how the team hung in there when they started 0-2 and were down 2-0 to Saint John in their final round robin game.
Next up is the ICE season ticket early bird deadline on June 1st. As I mentioned last night, it's important we find a way to get back to a base of 2,500. The community is too small to hope for a walk-up crowd of 1,000-1,500 every night to have good crowds.
It works out to $11/game.
The ICE have a payment play to stretch out the payments.
Check with your boss to see if he/she will get tickets for the staff.
If you can't go to all the games, find someone to split the season tickets.
Find a way to get the kids to go to games as they are the future season ticket holders.
The ICE are working on some new ideas for next season and winning a WHL Championship is something that sure was great to be a part of, especially seeing this team being built the last 4 years.