Winning the Memorial Cup for Kitchener may mean topping ‘Tips twice
Posted May 25, 2026 12:56:19 PM.
Last Updated May 25, 2026 12:58:41 PM.
While it’s still early in the tournament, the Memorial Cup features a battle of unbeaten teams on Monday night, and one of those teams is the Kitchener Rangers, who opened with a 5-0 win over the host Kelowna Rockets.
If the Rangers want to improve to 2-0 at the tourney, they’re going to have to get past the Everett Silvertips, the Western Hockey League champions, and the team many perceive as the Memorial Cup favourite this year. (Just don’t tell the Silvertips that.)
“The Western Hockey League hasn’t won (the Memorial Cup) in 12 years,” notes Silvertips head coach Steve Hamilton. “I find it hard to believe that we’d be considered the favourites, to be honest.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Everett’s play-by-play voice, Casey Bryant.
“I don’t think anyone in the Silvertips locker room believes that they are the favourites. Yes, they had a tremendous regular season, yes, they had a tremendous playoff, but they have always viewed themselves as confident but never cocky,” he said. “They’re never satisfied until the job is done. And to them, the Ed Chynoweth Cup (for winning the Western Hockey League) is great, but the job’s not done.”
Everett was at or near the top of the CHL rankings all season long, including the final eight weeks of the list. The Rangers, meanwhile, were ranked seventh on the final list of the season. Kitchener put up 47 regular-season wins and 101 points, while the Silvertips won 57 games and earned 117 points.
Do any of those statistics matter now? In one respect, they do, according to Bryant.
“This team has never missed the playoffs in 23 seasons, but the joke has always been, ‘Yeah, but when are you going to win the big one?’ You can make the playoffs as much as you want, but if it never results in a championship, what is the point?” Bryant posits. “Well, this kind of validates that in a lot of people’s eyes.”
Those 23 seasons for the Silvertips date back to 2003-2004, the year the franchise was founded. That makes this Everett’s first Memorial Cup appearance, while the Rangers are in their seventh tournament and looking for their third trophy.
If Kitchener wins, it will mark their first Memorial Cup title since 2003, the season before the Silvertips came to be.
Listen to 570 NewsRadio for every Rangers game at the Memorial Cup, including Monday night versus Everett. The pregame show starts at 8:30 p.m. ET.
