Boston Bruins: Players, Prospects and Coaches with Memorial Cup Experience

Boston Bruins prospect Jared Knight and the London Knights nabbed the Ontario Hockey League championship Friday night, topping Dougie Hamilton’s Niagara Ice Dogs in five games.

With that, the 20-year-old Knight will wrap up his major-junior career over the next two weeks at the Memorial Cup tournament in Shawinigan, Que.

When he joins the organization in 2012-13, whether it is in Boston or Providence, Knight will join eight other members of the Bruins family as Memorial Cup alumni. He hopes to join six of them among the select few who have won what is essentially Canada’s equivalent of the NCAA Final Four or Bowl Championship.

In chronological order, here is a quick encapsulation of the other eight Bruins and P-Bruins and their respective cracks at the Canadian Hockey League title.

1997: Claude Julien

The head coach’s first endeavor behind a high-profile bench was an instantaneous bar-raiser. He took the Hull Olympiques to a Quebec League title and on to the national tournament, which they had been pre-scheduled to host.

Going 2-1 in the round robin, the Olympiques garnered a bye to the championship game and waited for the Lethbridge Hurricanes to knock off Marc Savard’s Oshawa Generals, 5-4, in overtime in the semifinal.

Hull would avenge a 7-6 overtime loss to Lethbridge, throttling the Hurricanes, 5-1, in the title tilt.

1998: Andrew Ference

Teaming up with the likes of Marian Hossa and Brenden Morrow, Ference helped the Portland Winterhawks to a Western League and Canadian League title in his third of four major-junior seasons.

The Hawks swept through the round-robin portion of the tournament, hosted by the rival Spokane Chiefs, then bumped the Guelph Storm in overtime, 4-3, for the championship.

2003: Gregory Campbell

Julien was long gone from Hull when a new generation of Olympiques faced Campbell’s Kitchener Rangers at the 2003 tournament in Quebec City. The Ontario League champions would go unbeaten in four Memorial Cup games, taking the trophy with a 6-3 triumph over Hull in the final.

Campbell, who led all participants with seven points in the tournament, was coached by first-year New Jersey Devils skipper Peter DeBoer and shared the victory with the likes of captain Derek Roy, David Clarkson and Mike Richards.

2006: Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand

The Moncton Wildcats were the first of three stops for Marchand in his four Quebec League seasons. His second major-junior campaign culminated in a QMJHL title over the Quebec Remparts and his team hosting the national dance.

As it happened, Marchand’s Wildcats would knock off Lucic’s Vancouver Giants in the semifinal, 3-1, though they subsequent lost the championship to the vengeance-driven Remparts, 6-2.

Less than a month after their major-junior teams tangled, Lucic and Marchand were drafted by the Bruins in the second and third round, respectively.

2007: Lucic and Craig Cunningham

The Giants had their turn hosting the Memorial Cup a year after falling two wins short of the title. And not unlike the Remparts a year prior, they had bonus motivation stemming from the presence of the Medicine Hat Tigers, who had usurped their Western League crown in Game 7 a week prior to the national round robin.

As it happened, the homegrown Lucic stole the show at the Pacific Coliseum. He tallied two regulation goals in the opening game en route to a 4-3 overtime win over the Plymouth Whalers and added five assists over the next four games.

Two days after the Giants lost to the Tigers once more, they garnered one last shot at retribution when they throttled the Whalers, 8-1, in the semifinals.

With a 1-1 deadlock at hand and 4:55 to spare in regulation, Lucic set up Michal Repik for the winning strike and subsequently claimed Memorial Cup MVP accolades.

That would cap off the soon-to-be 19-year-old’s development days, but only began the major-junior career of another budding Bruin, Craig Cunningham. Cunningham graduated from the Western League last spring and spent the entire 2011-12 season in Providence, where he was the only player to dress for all 76 AHL games.

2009: Lane MacDermid and Jordan Caron

The third-year pro made his debut with Boston in March of this season, but has otherwise been a fan-favorite enforcer in Providence.

When MacDermid graduated to the professional ranks in 2009, he brought with him a winning formula from Windsor, where he won the CHL crown with the likes of Taylor Hall and Adam Henrique.

As it happened, MacDermid’s Memorial Cup endeavor was a fortuitous twist of fate. His Spitfires’ stint lasted a mere 58 games following a midseason trade from his original OHL club in Owen Sound.

Windsor had one of the tougher roads in the tournament’s history, needing to win a tiebreaker to decide who finished third in the round robin and, in turn, had the right to compete in the semifinal. In that play-in game, the Spitfires would victimize Caron’s Rimouski Oceanic, 6-4.

Roughly a month after their encounter, Caron and MacDermid were both chosen by the Bruins in the 2009 NHL draft.