What a way to cap things off.
After losing last year’s Memorial Cup championship game in heartbreaking fashion — falling 4-3 against the host team in the Saginaw Spirit — the London Knights were able to exorcise their demons and come away with the win in this yea’s championship game against the reigning WHL champion Medicine Hat Tigers.
The Knights really came alive in this game, and there were a number of truly stellar individual showings, but most notable for those of us around here was certainly Denver Barkey’s. Barkey — still clearly far from top form after returning for the round robin after taking a lower-body injury in the OHL playoffs — didn’t just make a big statement by simply pushing through some lingering bumps and bruises to be present as a leader for his team, but he walked the walk in terms of actual production as well. Back up on the Knights’ top line and top power play unit, Barkey was able to get himself on the board early in the second period to pull London ahead by a 3-0 margin, and then kept things rolling in a big way to make it 4-0 with a goal on the power play just past the midway point of the frame. This marked the end of his scoring on the night, but he came just inches away from completing the hat trick with a shot on the empty net in the waning seconds of the game. So it goes.
It developed into a bit of a shaky push to the end, as Medicine Hat tried their hardest to pull together a third period rally, but the buffer Barkey gave them proved to be insurance enough. When it was all said and done, the Knights came away with a 4-1 win, bringing the Memorial Cup back to London for the first time since their last win in 2016.
And this championship win puts just about as positive of a concluding stamp on very successful junior careers for both Barkey and his Knights teammate Oliver Bonk (who, despite being held off the board in this game, still showed positively both in his offensive support and his defensive coverages). Things are only going to get more difficult for them from here on out, as they look to turn the page and make their professional debuts with the Phantoms in the fall, but if there’s momentum at work with these sorts of things, these are two players who certainly have it.
