Erie Otters right wing Connor Brown (Terry Wilson, OHL Images)Connor Brown picked major junior over the NCAA but ended up spending a couple of semesters at the school of hard knocks.

The first points of reference for the Erie Otters' season are two other Connors — the time centre Connor Crisp gamely went in as an emergency goalie one Sunday against Niagara and the fact winning only 10 games all season made the team the winner of the Connor McDavid derby. Junior hockey fans probably also got some mirth out of the fact that Brown had an OHL-worst -72 plus/minus rating, which could be put down to being a rookie playing top-six minutes for a team that was outscored 2:1 (335-167).

Ultimately, the 18-year-old shone through it, counting 25 goals and 53 points in 60 games while improving his offensive touch and skating. Brown is undersized but could make for a good pick in the middle rounds of the NHL draft. He was ranked 110th among North American skaters in NHL Central Scouting's final ranking. Otters linemate Dane Fox was 46th.

"It's hard but it's something you have to battle through because all you can do about it is play hard," Brown, who was listed at 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds this season, says of staying positive despite Erie's on-ice growing pains. "It was a tough year for us in the loss column because we were a real young team, but I think I learned a lot there. Robbie Ftorek is a real good coach. He's good at teaching individual skills. I learned a lot defensively and a lot about how to score, because he [Ftorek] is someone who scored at the National League level. He taught me how to score around the net."

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WHL

Sportsnet's Sam Cosentino and Patrick King, plus some interloper, preview the MasterCard Memorial Cup. (Sportsnet)

All the coaches' commentary you can shake a composite stick at: Edmonton's Derek Laxdal, London assistant coach/assistant GM Misha Donskov, Shawinigan's Éric Veilleux and Saint John's Gerard Gallant. (The Pipeline Show)

Is Edmonton's Laurent Brossoit the top goaltender coming into the tournament? The folks in London might disagree. (Edmonton Journal)

Oil Kings wing Stephane Legault, whose father is a Quebecer, gave himself a crash course in French before departing for Shawinigan. (Edmonton Journal)

The Memorial Cup means the Oil Kings have to shift from "a marathon to a short-term event," in Laxdal's words. Like a sprint, eh? (Edmonton Sun, Edmonton Journal)

Saskatoon Blades owner Jack Brodsky, whose team hosts next spring's championship, will be watching the events in Shawinigan closely. (Saskatoon StarPhoenix)

Guy Flaming looks at the draft-eligible players in the tournament. (Coming Down The Pipe!)

Is Kootenay Ice coach Kris Knoblauch a candidate to be head coach at his alma mater, the University of Alberta? He would seem eminently qualified. (Edmonton Journal)

Edmonton Oil Kings' Griffin Reinhart (Marissa Baecker, Getty Images)For players eligible for the next two NHL entry drafts, the 2012 MasterCard Memorial Cup is a great chance to show teams why they should call their names on the draft floor in late June.

Of course, it's all about trying to help a team achieve junior hockey glory. But last year's Memorial Cup in Mississauga was exceptional for draft prospects. Eleven players who took part in the tournament were drafted, including five of the first 35 selections. Saint John Sea Dogs centre Jonathan Huberdeau stood out in particular. He was one of the biggest difference makers on last year's CHL champions, tallying three goals and six points in four games. This impressive play undoubtedly spiked his draft stock on several teams' lists, including the Florida Panthers, who drafted him third overall.

This year's draft prospects set to take centre stage at the Memorial Cup have the potential to make just as big of an impact at the tournament as last year's crop did. NHL's Central Scouting Service ranked four Memorial Cup-bound prospects in their top 60 among North American skaters, two of them cracked the top 10.

Former Ottawa Senators coach Cory Clouston is not returning to the WHL's Brandon Wheat Kings (The Canadian Pre …It's rare to see a major junior hockey club pay someone not to coach — but that could happen to Cory Clouston, who was in the NHL not too long ago.

The WHL's Brandon Wheat Kings announced Tuesday that Clouston will not be back for 2012-13. Wheaties owner and general manager Kelly McCrimmon stated this was a preventative move since Clouston "will perhaps have opportunities to coach professionally," but it's doubtful many bought the explanation.

Certainly not after some of the inside accounts that have emerged. Wheat Kings play-by-play broadcaster Bruce Luebke said there was a clear schism within the team. It's easy to chalk this up to a former NHL coach being unable to re-adapt to coaching teenagers, or would be if Clouston hadn't earned his spurs in the Western league.

From Luebke.

The hard-driving coaching style employed by Clouston was looked upon with disdain by the players, and his treatment of the players, especially the younger players, became such an issue that sources told me that team captain Mark Stone met with GM Kelly McCrimmon midway through the season to discuss the matter.

... An observation during the post-season for me came in the post-season, when I had a chance to watch the Wheat Kings' opponents (Calgary and Edmonton) practice, something not often afforded during the regular season.

Current Edmonton Oilers forward Taylor Hall's Windsor team was nearly done in by a rough schedule (The Canadian …Three years ago, the Windsor Spitfires showed having the least favourable schedule at the MasterCard Memorial Cup is not a portent of doom. All it took was an unprecedented comeback.

One team receives the short end of the scheduling stick at the Memorial Cup. Holding a four-team round-robin means one team has to play three times in four days — back-to-back against the two teams from the host league on Saturday and Sunday and then one day off before playing their final first-round game on Tuesday. In recent years, the QMJHL's best have faced this grind when the tournament is in Western Canada. The WHL takes its turn when an Ontario team hosts. When the QMJHL hosts like this season, it's the OHL's turn in the barrel.

It sometimes means a team can be practically eliminated before the event even gets into full swing. In 2009 at Rimouski, that almost befell the Taylor Hall-led Windsor Spitfires, who lost their first two games before winning their final round-robin contest, a tiebreaker, the semifinal and final to claim the first of successive championships. Now London, a young team poised for big things beyond this season, faces the same deal. There's an awareness it's a rough road, but it's not deal-breaker.

The Knights are also 13-5 this season while playing their third game in three or four days, including 3-1 in the post-season. Granted, that was against teams they were largely better than. Here is a look at how teams with the compact schedule have fared across the past 10 tournaments.

Tomas Hyka and his Gatineau Olympiques teammates could have had a new home rink years earlier (The Canadian Pr …Soon the Gatineau Olympiques will play in an arena that's a scale model of a NHL building and could be mistaken for one of the other buildings in the league. And many will profess how much they disliked the old barn that wasn't deemed worthy of saving.

Make no mistake, the Robert Guertin Arena has outlived its useful life. There is little arguing that point. It's cramped, there have been issues with the ice during early-season and playoff games and it was probably becoming a deal-breaker for many consumers with a casual interest in junior hockey. Monday's announcement that the province of Quebec is ponying up $26.5 million Cdn for a new 4,000-seat 'Centre du Gatineau' that will open in 2015 is great news for the Olympiques and QMJHL. (That's the same amount that the city of Gatineau, Que., has also committed.) Olympiques owner Alain Sear was able to make a case for a new building without publicly threatening to move the franchise.

Sear also told Jean-François Plante that this might re-establish the 'Piques as a bigger-market franchise. Gatineau won the Memorial Cup in 1997 and added championships in 2003, '04 and '08, but recent years have been much leaner aside from an improbable run to the 2011 QMJHL final.

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WHL

How the Edmonton Oil Kings were made: GM Bob Green acquired 10 current players during the franchise's first three seasons. (Edmonton Journal)

When Edmonton goalie Laurent Brossoit and Portland centre Sven Bärtschi play together in the Calgary Flames system, they'll have plenty to discuss. (Calgary Sun)

With a seven-game final that attracted several crowds above 10,000, league commissioner Ron Robison was rather ebullient on Monday. (Calgary Herald)

Hockey parents might want to heed the words of Theresa Reinhart, mother of the Edmonton Oil Kings' Griffin Reinhart and two other NHL prospects: "They didn't play spring hockey ... I never envisioned this. I kept trying to get them to be golfers. (Vancouver Sun)

Time for a retrospective on the original Edmonton Oil Kings franchise, which went to the Memorial Cup final seven consecutive seasons in the days before it was a tournament. Glen Sather played on the 1963 Cup-winning team. (Edmonton Journal)

Former Washington Capitals coach Dale Hunter and his brother Mark Hunter, London's GM (OHL Images)Fifty-nine of the 60 teams in the Canadian Hockey League could not pull off a coaching change during the week between the league final and MasterCard Memorial Cup. The one who probably could is the London Knights, which spurred the speculation that Dale Hunter would rejoin the team once he stint behind the bench of the NHL's Washington Capitals ended.

Hunter and his brother and partner in the Knights, coach-GM Mark Hunter, come as close to interchangeable as two hockey coaches could. After the coaching job Mark Hunter did steering London to the Ontario Hockey League championship, though, it seems like the Knights have decided to leave well enough alone. The timing was awfully synergistic though, with Washington's season ending 24 hours after the OHL playoffs ended.

From Morris Dalla Costa:

[Dale Hunter] was clear about what his role would be with the Knights, a team he owns and coached for 10 years before moving to the Capitals, when the Knights begin their Memorial Cup tournament Saturday in Shawinigan.

"I'm a fan," he said. "No, no, no, I won't be behind the bench. Mark has done a great job and they don't need anything to change.

"I am excited about seeing them because I left after 10, 15 games and they are so much better now. That's what's really exciting for me."