Oil Kings hope ‘gross’ goals are behind them, as WHL champs need more puck luck

LONDON, Ont. — Pro tip: hold off running with that The Curse of Chris Bruton column until the Edmonton Oil Kings have their date with destiny.

Rationality would agree with Billy Ray Cyrus character in Friday Night Lights — "ain't no curses" — but one has to wonder at how the Oil Kings ended up in their current fix. There was Mads Eller's clearing attempt last Saturday that ricocheted into the net off the leg of Guelph's Kerby Rychel; Edmonton never scored again. On Tuesday, there was a triptych of terrible puck luck. The pass that hit a broken stick and put Val-d'Or's Pierre-Maxime Poudrier off to the races for a second-period shorty. An apparent missed icing that could have halted the play for the tying Foreurs goal. Lastly, Brett Pollock hit the crossbar in the second minute of the first overtime, and a puck skipped by Griffin Reinhart in the second OT to put Anthony Richard on a breakaway for the winner.

Since the Memorial Cup is all about opportunism, this is the point where one mentions no Western Hockey League team has won since this happened.

Of course, reason and randomness have a lot more to bear on why no Dub team has raised the trophy since it broke in two on poor Spokane Chiefs captain Chris Bruton six years ago in Kitchener. The Oil Kings are just hoping they can do a memory wipe. Everything evens out in hockey.

"The momentum swings have just been crazy," forward Mitch Moroz says. "You look at some of the goals we have given up. It's just been cruel and unbelievable, some of the bounces that have gone the other way. That's the way it works sometimes. You have to be able to respond.

"Hopefully we got all those gross ones out of the way early and now we're going to have some luck," Moroz adds. "Starting tonight when we're watching [the Guelph-London game, where the Storm can eliminate the Knights and the need for a tiebreaker game]."

'Fine line'

From the start of the tournament era in 1972 through Spokane's triumph in '08, the WHL won the lion's share of Memorial Cups, 15 of 37. Kelowna and Brandon lost the final in 2009 and '10 to the stacked Windsor Spitfires. In the past three years, Quebec League teams have won. The Portland Winterhawks lost to Halifax in the 2013 final.

It's just random distribution.

"This year, we’ve got four good teams," Foreurs coach Mario Durocher said. "London had 103 points and they have speed, Edmonton is a big team, Guelph is great in all three zones.

"It [assuming one league will dominate] is like the same thing as the world juniors, people saying, 'Canada should win all the time,' " adds Durocher, who guided Team Canada to a silver in 2004 before the the next five editions capture gold medals. "There’s a fine line. It’s a one-game tournament. One game can make a difference."

The Oil Kings' challenge now is make a clean break from a string of unfortunate events.

"It's a game of bounces, they got some bounces on their last three goals," coach Derek Laxdal said. "That is what Val-d'Or does. They keep hanging around and the goaltender keeps them in it and when they get a chance they jump on it. I thought we deserved a better fate even though our second period wasn't great.

"In a short-term tournament, you have to have a [poor] short-term memory, That's game is done with. We got to focus on our next game whether it is on Thursday or Friday. If it has to be Thursday and we play London, so be it."

In a sports world trending more toward advanced metrics than mysticism, though, there is a some rear-guard action appeal to wondering if there's a hex on the Dub. Meantime, the Oil Kings are confident that they will bounce back from Tuesday's loss. Moroz noted the Griffin Reinhart-helmed blueline brigade and goalie Tristan Jarry tend to take it personally after losses where they couldn't midwife an early lead into a win.

That was the case after Portland's four-goal comeback in Game 6 of the WHL final in Edmonton. That trend continued when it beat London on Sunday while playing the second leg of back-to-back games.

"I got a lot of faith in our back end and in Jars [Jarry]," said Moroz, an Edmonton Oil Kings second-round pick. "Any time they feel that they haven't had their best game and the bounces haven't gone their way, they always respond. That flows right into our guys up front and being a defensive-oriented team, when those guys are being solid back there, everything seems to work out.

"I'm just hoping that everything could have gone wrong, has, and we'll get some luck our way," Moroz said.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.