The Vancouver Giants are the defending Memorial Cup champions.
I have to admit it. Much of last weekend was spent on the couch with NCAA basketball bracket sheets in hand, flipping games more often than Pam Anderson goes through rocker boyfriends.
Wall-to-wall college hoops coverage. An awesome spectacle to watch, knowing that every game is do-or-die.
And I really don't even like the sport of basketball. Go figure.
What puts me on the edge of the seat is that adrenaline rush, knowing that if any one favorite has a bad game, they're going home. Everything is on the line for each and every drive to the basket, every free-throw, and every foul taken.
As much as I do love hockey more than any sport, I never get stoked quite the same for the Memorial Cup as I do for NCAA hoops during March Madness.
Too bad, really, as the CHL offers some of the greatest hockey that puck aficionados can find.
So maybe the CHL does it all wrong in the way they run the Memorial Cup?
What if the Canadian Hockey League was to rank all teams in the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL and take, say, the top 16 to the Memorial Cup, as was the idea recently floated around one Toronto sports radio station.
Not to take away from each league's own playoff format - that's fine for each circuit - but run the Memorial Cup separately, a special end-of-season tournament meant to really stoke Canadian Junior Hockey fans.
The winner of each league will be slotted in the top three spots as a token gesture, but after that it's a 16-team free-for-all.
The league and media could promote the heck out of it. Make it into a bracket-style event and encourage people to play some pool action on it.
Spread it over a couple weeks in several major markets - Toronto/Ottawa, Montreal/Quebec, Calgary/Edmonton - and turn it into an international junior hockey spectacle.
None of this four-out-of-seven crap. One loss, and you catch the train home. Just like NCAA hoops.
There's got to be some way to spread the excitement across the country so that more fans get into the Memorial Cup excitement. A winner-take-all, one-game showdown is the answer.
It works for NCAA. And if done right, would work for the Canadian Hockey League as well.