The London Knights play their second game of the Memorial Cup on Monday evening against the Moose Jaw Warriors, as London will look to improve to 2-0 in the tournament.
The London Knights kicked off their Memoria Cup tournament with a dominant win against the Drummondville Voltigeurs. Next, they will look to improve to 2-0 with a win over the Moose Jaw Warriors.
Moose Jaw has a very top-heavy team with some top NHL-affiliated prospects; Brayden Yager, Jagger Firkus, Denton Mateychuk, Matthew Savoie. But in their first game against the tournament hosts, they took the loss.
The Warriors were dominated by the Saginaw Spirit as soon as the puck dropped, as Saginaw came ready to play. Moose Jaw finally got their offence going in the second half of the game, but it was too late.
London's best bet for winning this game is to get out to a good start when the puck drops. If the Knights can put in a goal early, or dominate in Moose Jaw's defensive zone, it will make it more difficult for them to climb back into the game.
London's depth chart is deeper than Moose Jaw's, and that was also a key to success for the Saginaw Spirit in their win — they got offensive contributions from all four lines.
In game one for the Knights, they got two goals from Ruslan Gazizov, one from Oliver Bonk, and one from Kasper Halttunen. They shut out Drummondville in that game.
London's game plan should be to suffocate Moose Jaw's offence off-the-hop, if they can do that, they are almost guaranteed to win this game.
If the London Knights can improve to a 2-0 record tonight with a win, they will be tied with their OHL opponents — the Saginaw Spirit. A win tonight for the Knights would make an all-OHL final a very likely outcome.
A London vs. Saginaw Memorial Cup final would not only be entertaining from an OHL standpoint, it would prove how dominant and competitive the OHL was this season.
London and Saginaw play each other in the final round robin game this week, but first we will see London play Moose Jaw. The puck drops tonight at 7:30pm EST at the DOW Event Center, where London will look to remain undefeated.