Spokane Chiefs are 3-0 in the Mastercard Memorial Cup - WHL

MLN - THE RAW FEED - www.mlntherawfeed.com – Spokane - The Spokane Chiefs are 3-0 in the MasterCard Memorial Cup and will wait until Sunday, May 25th to see what their final destiny is in the Championship Final. Drayson Bowman, Mitch Wahl and Levko Koper all scored for Spokane in a 3-1 win over the Gatineau Olympique.

"You can't ask for more," Bowman said. The 18-year- old's five goals lead the Memorial Cup. "In a tournament style, which a lot of us haven't played in a while, the key is to get off to a good start"

"We wanted to be 3-0 and move into the final," Wahl said. "Coming into the Sunday we'll get some good practices in and be ready."

Following a Belleville win over Gatineau on Monday night Spokane already knew they were slated for the final based on potential tie breakers, but the win tonight solidified it for the club.

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Head Coach Bill Peters brushed off the notion of any potential let down coming into the game, "Our players our so competitive and that's why we're a good hockey team. Its intrinsic and something that I don't teach. I knew it wouldn't be a problem getting the guys going.

"It was important to us to play well and get better as the tournament goes along and we got better as the game went along, dug in and played well."

Gatineau, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Champion finished the tournament 0-3 and had their hopes of a Memorial Cup Championship dashed.

The Olympique scored the first goal of the game on one of two first period power play opportunities. Maxime Mallette's shot from just inside the blueline was deflected by the shaft of Alexandre Touchette's stick and flipped past Dustin Tokarski.

Spokane took a one goal lead in the second with a pair of goals. Bowman stepped into a slap shot on the power play from the top of the right circle and blew it past Ryan Mior, the Gatineau starting netminder, at 5:20 of the period, a prototypical Bowman goal.

"It was a great feed by (Chris) Bruton and that's how we've been doing it all year, no reason to change to this point," Bowman said.

Wahl scored his second goal of the tournament at 16:09 for the eventual game winner by carrying the puck across the slot, delaying, and snapping it against the grain that beat Mior to the blocker side.

Mior stopped 40 Spokane shots as the Chiefs outshot the Olympique 43-27, continuing an impressive defensive effort that began on Sunday in a 2-1 win against Kitchener.

"Defensively we have been solid all year and our team realizes that the better we are defensively the more we have the puck," Peters said.

Koper found the empty net from the Gatineau side of the red line to ice the game for the Chiefs with 35- seconds remaining.

Spokane will have the benefit of watching Kitchener and Belleville play a pair of games, Wednesday in the round robin finale and in Friday's semi-final, before facing one of them on Sunday.

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