The Kamloops Blazers may not have qualified for the 2023 Memorial Cup through a WHL championship, but they're far from write-offs. They have a championship pedigree.
After 28 years, the Kamloops Blazers are hoping that the team's second turn hosting the Memorial Cup turns out as well as the first.
In 1995, in front of sold-out houses at what was then three-year-old Riverside Coliseum, the Blazers ran the table with preliminary-round wins over the Hull Olympiques, Detroit Jr. Red Wings and Brandon Wheat Kings.
Their first-place finish in the round-robin vaulted them straight into the championship game. There, they beat the Jr. Red Wings 8-2 and became the only team in Memorial Cup history to win the title three times in four years.
Now the Vancouver Canucks team page manager for The Hockey News, Jeff Paterson was the Blazers' first-year radio play-by-play voice in that 1994-95 season.
Earlier this week, he took a trip down memory lane when the team's flagship station, CHNL, rebroadcast the Memorial Cup wins from 1992, 1994 and 1995 back-to-back-to-back.
"It's the championship finals — these are two really good teams," Paterson recalled. "Detroit took eight penalties, and Kamloops scored five power-play goals.
"It was 1-0 after one, but Kamloops had totally dominated the shot clock. And then they scored six times in the second period so they were up 7-0 after two.
"The third was a coronation. Both teams wanted the clock to run down as fast as it could to get to the end."
Behind the bench for all three wins — Kamloops native Don Hay. He served as an assistant to Tom Renney up till 1992, then over the head job for three seasons.
That paved Hay's way to the NHL, where he had brief tenures behind the bench of the Phoenix Coyotes, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (as an assistant) and Calgary Flames. But he has been back in the WHL since 2004, including another four seasons with his hometown team from 2014 to 2018.
Last fall, he joined the staff of current Blazers bench boss Shaun Clouston as an associate coach — and a local legend with first-hand memories of the city's last Memorial Cup moment.
At Wednesday's introductory coaches' press conference, Clouston explained how Hay came back on board.
"He was still planning on returning to Portland — he'd been in Portland for four years after his last stint here," Clouston said. "We coached against each other a lot over the years but hadn't spent a ton of time together, and we we had some great discussions. We talked about coaching styles.
"I thought it made a lot of sense for him to come back home and be close to his grandkids, and he's been unbelievable for us. The guys love him."
In addition to his three Memorial Cup runs with the Blazers, Hay also made two appearances during his decade with the Vancouver Giants. Their win in 2007 made him the only head coach in the tournament's century-plus history to lift the trophy three times.
"He's an unbelievable teacher, and his experience, it's going to be invaluable," Clouston said.
In 1995, the Blazers' star power included series MVP Shane Doan, offensive dynamo Darcy Tucker and 17-year-old Jarome Iginla. This year, the team is headlined by 2022 CHL player of the year Logan Stankoven and two-time WHL defenseman of the year Olen Zellweger.
A trade-deadline acquisition from the Everett Silvertips in January, Zellweger exploded with 22 goals and 52 points during his 32 regular-season games with the Blazers. In the playoffs, he led all defensemen with 11 goals and 29 points in just 14 games.
He and Stankoven (30 points) topped the WHL's post-season scoring race even though the Blazers were eliminated by the Seattle Thunderbirds in the Western Conference final.
A second-round pick by the Anaheim Ducks in 2021, Zellweger expressed his appreciation for Hay over the last five months on the 'THN on the Dub' podcast earlier this month.
"Don works with the defensemen, so I talk to him more often, and I work with him more closely," Zellweger said. "He's been great. The ice time has been really good, and he plays me in the right situations."
While Kamloops claimed its Memorial Cup berth this year as the host team, don't underestimate the Blazers' chances of making some noise. The '95 group was one of 10 hosts to win the Memorial Cup in the last 30 years. Seven of those winners were not their league champions, including the Saint John Sea Dogs just last year.
Kamloops has finished first in the WHL's B.C. division in each of the last four years. In 2022-23, the club put up a record of 48-13-4-3 for 103 points — just its second time cracking triple-digits since 1995 and good for third overall in the WHL.
In the playoffs, the Blazers easily swept the Vancouver Giants and the Portland Winterhawks in their first two series. Then, they ran into the powerhouse Thunderbirds, who had also ended their season in the Western Conference final one year earlier in a tight seven-game series.
After subsequently falling to the Edmonton Oil Kings in the 2022 WHL final, this year's Thunderbirds came back even stronger and also swept their first two series. It's a credit to Kamloops that they were able to get two wins off Seattle in their playoff round, especially after seeing that the regular-season champion Winnipeg Ice managed just one win in the five-game WHL final.
The Blazers played their last game on May 8, so they were able to take a bit of time off before getting back to training and preparation for their hosting duties. They'll be rested and have the energy of a loud and loyal fan base behind them when they get back into action on Friday against the Quebec Remparts (9 p.m. ET, TSN) at the arena that's now known as Sandman Centre.
"The city, I'm sure, will be an incredible host," Paterson said. "It was back then. One of my great memories is just how the city embraced the opportunity to show off to the hockey world.
"They were on the map as this crazy hockey hotbed. To have won twice, be defending champs and then roll out the welcome mat for everybody to see what Kamloops is all about — in the downtown core, the businesses embraced it. Every storefront had orange and blue and white, the Blazers' colors. Everywhere you walked, you realized that it was a big deal.
"They were chasing history, and the people of Kamloops certainly recognized what was at stake for them."