The Broken Trophy (2010/05)

Originally written in 2010/05 in Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada for a Grade 7 English poetry assignment.

One game,

Two teams,

One loser,

One champion,

The home team scores first,

The crowd is excited,

Away team scores next,

The tension is rising,

The visitors score again,

But the 6,807 anxious fans keep watching,

Another goal for the guests,

The arena is silent,

With no goalie in net,

And the bitter smell of defeat in the air,

The game is put away with one more goal,

So close,

One game,

Three goals,

Frustration,

Defeat,

Shame,

Broken dreams,

Broken trophy.

(Written two years after the Amateur Major Junior (age 16-20) Ontario Hockey League [OHL] Kitchener Rangers’ Canadian Hockey League [CHL] Memorial Cup championship final loss on home ice at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium in Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada on 2008/05/25 against the Spokane Chiefs of the Western Hockey League [WHL] who are based in Spokane, Washington, United States of America.

The Memorial Cup trophy imploded after Chiefs’ captain Chris Bruton initially raised it and was passing it to teammate Trevor Glass.

2008 was the last year a Memorial Cup host team won their league championship in spite of their automatic tournament berth as host. Since then, four host teams have won the Memorial Cup after being eliminated in their league playoffs before the league championship series.

So the broken trophy can symbolize the integrity of the Memorial Cup tournament being diminished after the great financial success of the Memorial Cup tournament for the CHL and City of Kitchener in 2008 encouraging other cities to bid to host the tournament and not put full effort into winning their league championship to get in through “the front door” and the CHL going along with this approach, likely for financially corrupt reasons.

Also of note, the Kitchener Rangers had not won their league championship or appeared in the Memorial Cup tournament since that game in 2008 as of 2026/05/28.

The 2025-26 Kitchener Rangers won the 2026 OHL championship and all three round-robin games in the 2026 Memorial Cup round-robin in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada to clinch them a spot in the Memorial Cup final on 2026/05/31.

They will play either the Chicoutimi Saguenéens of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League [QMJHL] based in Saguenay, Québec, Canada, or the Everett Silvertips of the Western Hockey League [WHL] based in Everett, Washington, United States of America.)