The Windsor Spitfires may be out of the OHL playoffs, but their season is not yet over.
Despite the Spitfires losing to their rivals, the London Knights, in the first round of this year's playoffs, the team is preparing the next phase of its postseason, as host of the 2017 MasterCard Memorial Cup. With the Spitfires hosting the tournament they receive an automatic berth, and the players and coaches are following a road map to stay focused and prepare.
Spits head coach Rocky Thompson says it will be a long layoff, over a month, but they have thought of everything well in advance.
"We have a plan in place," says Thompson, in his second year as Windsor's bench boss. "We talked to people who have been through this before. And so, what worked and what didn't work, we're going to combine those together and come up with our outline for the next six weeks."
While Thompson would not discuss exactly what he and his coaching staff have planned for the players during the layoff, he did say his team will have an edge their potential Memorial Cup opponents will not have come cup time.
"What were going to have as an advantage, for the first time all year we'll be healthy," says Thompson. "Come the Memorial Cup we're going to get Logan Stanley back, which is going to be a big opportunity for us and for our team. Other teams will be broken down over the course of the playoffs. We won't be."
Stanley has been out for half the regular season and the OHL playoffs while recovering from knee surgery, though he is expected to be ready for the Memorial Cup. Other players, such as Logan Brown and Jalen Chatfield, have suffered from various injuries and another, Gabriel Vilardi, missed some time due to an appendectomy.
Spitfires goaltender Michael DiPietro, who has emerged this season as one of the OHL's more consistent backstops, says he is not worried about the time off.
"We're looking at a different perspective where we can actually learn from it and rest," says DiPietro. "And in May we'd have an advantage on our opponents coming out for the Memorial Cup because we did have this break and we're all rested and hopefully we'll come out hard."
In addition to keeping up practices and brushing up on their systems for the Cup tournament, the team's administration has begun the process of working with its 2017 OHL priority selection class. The annual draft took place on Saturday and Windsor drafted 15 players, mostly at the AAA minor midget level.
The Memorial Cup will kick off on May 19 at the WFCU Centre.
