After a disappointing Game 7 overtime loss in Erie, the London Knights are looking back on their season.
Players held their "exit interviews" with team officials on Wednesday, a day after losing 5-4 in overtime to the Erie Otters in the deciding game of their Western Conference semi-finals series.
General Manager Rob Simpson says, while the season ended sooner than players and coaches would have liked, the team should be proud.
"You look back and you're happy with some things that you've accomplished, but it's tough when you lose like that," he told reporters at Budweiser Gardens on Wednesday. "It's never easy. You're that close to moving on and continuing your season. So, right now it's tough, but you have to push ahead and look to try to learn from what you could've done better for next year."
The Knights finished the regular season with 46 wins, 15 losses, three overtime losses, and five shootout losses. The record was good enough to grab the fourth seed in the Western Conference going into the playoffs.
A year after winning the Memorial Cup, the Knights found themselves facing a first round exit after falling behind three games to one against Windsor. But, determined not to bow out of the playoffs so quickly, the Knights reeled off three straight wins over the Spitfires to set up the showdown with Erie.
According to Simpson, that showed just what the team was made of and give the players a confidence boost heading into the series against the Otters.
"The biggest thing I'll remember about this team will be the will to win," he said. "At any point when we were down, we were down [three games to one] to Windsor, we were down in this series and came back in games where we were down two and three goals, you just always had a feeling that we were going to come back and be able to win. The character in that dressing room and the belief in each other was just something special and nice to see."
But the Knights' hopes of winning a second straight Memorial Cup were dashed at 10:40 in overtime on Tuesday night when Warren Foegele found the back of the net, sending Erie to the Western Conference finals and a date with the Owen Sound Attack.
And so, the Knights brain trust looks to the 2017-2018 season. Simpson says work has already begun.
"We look toward next year. Obviously we have the import draft coming up that we're going to focus on. We have a lot of young guys that have been down practicing with us that we've signed along for the run and training and getting prepared for next season. A lot of the focus goes to that and making sure we develop those players the right way through the summer," he said.
