Coming into the MasterCard Memorial Cup tournament, a lot of insiders thought the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League champions, the Val’ d’Or Foreurs, would be lucky to win a game. Virtually all of those insiders, however, were of the opinion that the best player in the tournament was the Foreurs’ Anthony Mantha, the great long winger from Longeuil, Que., he of 57 goals in 57 regular-season games and 24 more in 24 playoff games leading up to the tournament.
Well, it’s absolutely wrong on one count and somewhat wrong on another.
On Count One, the Q’s reps have won not one but two games in securing their spot in Friday’s semifinal against Western Hockey League champions Edmonton. They’re a remarkably resilient bunch who came in and eclipsed all expectations.
On Count Two, while Mantha hasn’t exactly disappointed, he would not quite rank as his team’s best player, never mind the star of the tournament. Yeah, Detroit’s first-rounder last June scored the only goal in Val d’Or’s 1-zip win over host London in the tournament’s opener. Still, you’d have to reserve that top honour for Mantha’s teammate, goaltender Antoine Bibeau, a Leafs sixth-rounder from last June, who was completely lights out in the Foreurs’ 1-0 win over host London in the opener and 4-3 double overtime victory over the Oil Kings Tuesday night. The fact that Bibeau has outstripped Mantha just goes to the nature of short tournaments—in a seven-game series, a skater can find his game and impose himself in time, but if you’re in a rush (and at the MasterCard Memorial Cup you are definitely in a rush), goalies can come in and steal the show.
Though the WHLers lost to the Foreurs on their first meeting, the conventional wisdom is that the Oil Kings should prevail Friday night. Maybe this time the conventional wisdom will be right. The game plan for the Oil Kings will not change dramatically: Once again they’ll send out defenceman Griffin Reinhart against Mantha every chance they get. Best-on-best is just about the best entertainment value for fans and the best measure for scouts in attendance.
It’s a fascinating study because Reinhart came to London as, arguably, the second-most heralded NHL prospect still playing in the last week of the CHL season, apologies to London forwards Max Domi and Bo Horvat. Reinhart was considered a potential franchise defenceman when snapped up by the Islanders fourth overall in the 2012 draft and a threat to make the big club this year.
“Griffin is the best shut-down defenceman in the WHL,” Oil Kings’ centre Curtis Lazar said. “I don’t know that there’s a comparable player to Mantha in our league. There are other skilled guys but nobody as big as [Mantha]. Other guys can finish chances, but he can create his own [chances] too.”
Reinhart and Lazar could have a bit of a book on Mantha as all three were on the Canadian team at the world juniors a few months back. And the Oil Kings took a different approach than London tried against Mantha in the tournament opener, sending out their own big winger Josh Anderson to shut him down. The Guelph Storm did a more effective job against Val-d’Or leaning on no particular matchup but, then again, the Ontario Hockey League champions have had their way with everybody so far and Mantha judged his performance in a 6-2 loss as “horrible.”
An NHL scout here, with no rooting interest in either Reinhart’s or Mantha’s performance, suggested that the blueliner’s foot speed and mobility “has been exposed a bit” in the tournament. “It didn’t really hurt them [with Mantha in the opening-round game] but it would be a concern,” the scout said. “The bloom’s off the rose with Reinhart. He was an important player in the playoffs in the Dub but a lot of people back in his draft year thought that he’d be in the league [the NHL] this season. They projected him to make improvements in positional play and skating and it’s been a more gradual thing than they expected. And they wanted to see more from him at the world juniors even if the suspension screwed things up.”
Reinhart had to sit out games at the start of the under-20s because of a suspension carrying over from the previous tournament. A handicap, but then again, franchise defencemen are supposed to play right through stuff like that.
You can make too much of a one-on-one matchup, the game-within-the-game. After all, the standard rules apply. Said Edmonton blueliner Blake Orban: “I wasn’t on a lot [against Mantha] but you have to do the same thing as you would against any top winger. You have to be aware of where he is and take away his time and space.”
The Oil Kings did manage to keep Mantha off the scoreboard in their first meeting—it was the rest of the Foreurs who did the damage: centre Anthony Richard with the overtime winner being the killing strike. The way the law of averages work, if you manage to keep Mantha away in one game, he gets you twice in the next.