EVERETT — The Everett Silvertips are making a play for junior hockey’s most coveted event.
The Tips announced Friday that they will submit a bid to host the 2010 Memorial Cup, the Canadian Hockey League’s premier function.
Everett became the third city to announce its intentions to bid for the 2010 Memorial Cup, which will be held at a WHL venue. Brandon, Manitoba, and Kelowna, B.C., already announced their bids to host the tournament.
Prior media reports out of those cities indicated an unidentified U.S. Division team was also interested.
“We are no longer unidentified,” Everett general manager Doug Soetaert said with a smile.
“We think we’re capable of hosting a successful event,” Soetaert added. “We’ll put our best foot forward and see where it goes.”
The bids will be presented to the WHL on Oct. 15, with the announcement of the winning bid coming the following day.
The Memorial Cup is the annual week-long tournament that determines the junior hockey champion of Canada. It pits the champions of the WHL against the champs of the Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, along with the host team.
In recent years the Memorial Cup has grown to become more than just a hockey tournament, with a festival-like atmosphere taking over as thousands of fans flock to the host city. The Tips want Everett to join the party.
“We’ve looked at it and we feel this community is ready,” Soetaert said. “Obviously we have a state-of-the-art facility (Comcast Arena), we have a great fan base, and we’ve been in the top four or five in attendance since day one.
“We owe it to our fans.”
Each year the host rotates among the three leagues. Vancouver was the last WHL city to host the tournament in 2007.
Typically the WHL switches back between the Eastern Conference and Western Conference for each of its turns, and fellow Western Conference cities have hosted the Memorial Cup the past two times through the WHL — Vancouver in 2007, Kelowna in 2004.
Also, only four times in the 88-year history of the Memorial Cup has a city in the United States played host, the most recent being when Spokane hosted the tournament in 1998.
Brandon appears to be the heavy favorite. WHL commissioner told the Kelowna Daily Courier that “Brandon would be our leading candidate.” That’s contingent on Brandon upgrading its arena, the Keystone Centre, which the city already has pledged to do. Kelowna general manager Bruce Hamilton indicated in the story that Kelowna’s bid was more about supporting Brandon’s bid than trying to win.
But despite all the factors stacked against Everett, the Tips are going for it in earnest.
“We’ve done a lot of homework,” said Soetaert, who said the team’s been quietly looking into the possibility of submitting a bid for about six months. “We’ve talked to the mayor, we’ve talked to a number of business people in the community, and there’s a lot of support for it.
“I don’t know what our chances are, the other markets are great markets and would do a great job,” Soetaert added. “All we can do is give our presentation and see where the rest of our members decide they want it. That’s what we’re willing to do.”
One factor in deciding whether to bid for the Memorial Cup is, given the automatic berth, whether the team feels it will have a roster capable of competing for the title. The general feeling is that Everett, which appears to just be coming off a peak point talent wise, might not be ready in two years.
“We’ll do what we have to do to be ready for it,” Soetaert said. “We have a good group of young players coming in this year and I know after one year under their belts they’ll be a better hockey club. We feel we’ll be very competitive, and if we get the bid we’ll do the best we can to be as good as we can be.”
Nick Patterson’s Silvertips blog: http://www.heraldnet.com/silvertipsblog
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