The presidents of the Canadian Hockey League and of the Saginaw Spirit Hockey Club were among a number of people who had nothing but praise for the City of Kamloops as it hosted the Memorial Cup for the first time in 28 years.

CHL President, Dan MacKenzie, says Kamloops did a great job showcasing itself during the 11-day tournament.

“It started with the Arrival of the Cup at Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc,” MacKenzie told RadioNL Sunday. “The fans in Kamloops have been great. Every game has been sold out, and the vibe in the games even when the Blazers weren’t playing was great.”

“Norm Daley and Yves Lacasse, the guys who were running it, [they] did a great job of activating the corporate support.”

MacKenzie went so far as saying the City lived up to the Memorial Cup’s motto of ‘Shine Together – Together We Shine’.

“What we try to do is really have the event represent the city that is being held in and really have it sort of shine based on what that city is all about,” MacKenzie said.

“Saint John last year did a great job and it had a very different vibe to this, just given what that city was all about and where there were at, and coming out of COVID was part of it,” MacKenzie said. “This one is sort of our first full year back out of COVID [and] it’s been great.”

He also says the Memorial Cup will have a lasting impact in Kamloops, pointing to the Legacy Scholarship that was started with the 2022 tournament.

“That is going to live on and next year there will be a couple of students who are going to get $5,000 bursaries for the following year, and we’ll be doing that for multiple years so that it just isn’t sort of a one-and-done tournament,” he said.

“We did it in Saint John and we’ll be doing it in Kamloops too.”

MacKenzie also noted that money raised from the 50/50 jackpots will go towards supporting other community legacy projects in Kamloops.

There’s that “Let’s Go Blazers” chant we thought we’d here today. CHL Prez Dan Mckenzie addressing the fans in the building ahead of the Memorial Cup presentation. #Kamloops

— Jon Keen (@JonKeenNLSports) June 5, 2023

Lacasse, the Chair of the Host Organizing Committee, said the 500-plus volunteers did a great job representing Kamloops during the tournament, as did the people in the service and tourism industries.

“I wanted our volunteers to be kind, to be caring, to be compassionate, to be helpful, to have a smile on their face, to shake people hands, to give people a high-five, and to go out of their way to make our visitors feel like special,” Lacasse said on the NL Morning News.

“And I can tell you that all of our volunteers did that.”

Lacasse also said the feedback he got from visitors to Kamloops was “all positive” and he expects many to return to the area in the future.

“There will will be a lot of spinoff,” Lacasse said. “I heard so many comments about how welcoming our businesses, our pubs, our bars, our restaurants were. I heard so many good complements about the quality of the food, and how friendly everybody was.”

Daley too says the tournament would not be a success if not for the efforts of volunteers.

“If you get a chance, thank a volunteer for this event. That is why we’ve been so successful and we’re getting all these kudos because our volunteers have done such a fantastic job,” Daley said. “I want to thank the volunteers and the whole city for everything they’ve done for us.”

Now that the tournament – and the festivities – have wrapped up, the Kamloops and District Chamber of Commerce is eager to see just how the local business community benefitted.

While the host organizing committee says the economic impact is expected to be somewhere in the range of $12-to $15 million, Chamber President, Tim Shoults, says its a little difficult to estimate a dollar figure just yet.

He does say though that one of the biggest benefits will be the exposure that Kamloops has had on a national level just three months after it hosted the 2023 Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

“It puts Kamloops further on the map of future events. Every single event that we put on from the Scotties, to the Brier, to the Western Canada Summer Games, to the Memorial Cup, it just makes a more compelling case for the next event and the next event after that,” Shoults said

“All that time on TSN isn’t just in the rink, it is for Kamloops as a community.”

Kamloops, which also hosted the Special Olympics BC Winter Games in February and the USports men’s soccer nationals last November, is hoping to host the 2027 North American Indigenous Games with Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc.

As for the Memorial Cup, all eyes now turn to Michigan as the Saginaw Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League prepare to host the 2024 tournament. It will be the first time the tournament is played in the Untied States since the Spokane Chiefs hosted it in 1998.

“Kamloops has knocked it out of the park. I’ve been to 10 of the last 12 Memorial Cups and none better than this one,” Saginaw Spirit President and Managing Partner, Craig Goslin told RadioNL.

“The Host Organizing Committee, the volunteers, they’ve done an amazing job. They treated everybody with such professionalism and courtesy and that is what we want to provide in the Memorial Cup in Saginaw next year.”

Kamloops 🤝 Saginaw pic.twitter.com/JD7wPhMRMi

— Saginaw Spirit (@SpiritHockey) June 5, 2023

Goslin also praised Daley – who is also the Blazers President – and Lacasse for the “unbelievable job” they’ve done in Kamloops.

“They’ve given us full access being the next host and its been invaluable,” Goslin said. “For the first part of the tournament, we had a number of our community dignitaries here so I could show them [what its about]. They’ve never been to a Memorial Cup and I’m asking for substantial money to renovate our building, and to do some amazing things in our community, and they were amazed at what they saw here in Kamloops.”

“We had our staff there for the second part of the tournament, 14 staff members, shadowing the team here and TSN and the like and its been a great experience for them so we’re going to take all this information back to Saginaw and put on the best Memorial Cup we can next year.”

A WHL team will host the tournament in 2026, though its not clear where the tournament will be held.

The Kelowna Rockets, who were set to host the tournament in 2020 before it was cancelled by COVID-19, are rumored to be in the mix.

“I think when it [Memorial Cup hosting possibility] comes back in 2026. if our building meets the standards and the codes, I think it would be something interesting,” Rockets General Manager, Bruce Hamilton, told RocketFAN. “We will certainly be through the cycle, so we should be retooled and ready to go in a hurry. We still have issues that need to be settled within the building so we can bring that event back.”

“We still feel it is owed to us, and somewhere down the line that opportunity will come back to us.”

– with files from Paul James, Bill Cowen, Abby Zieverink, and Jeff Andreas