There was no escaping the Memorial Cup for Derrick Martin.
Not after the Kelowna Rockets hosted it. Not after the Rockets were eliminated. And certainly not while the tournament was still being played inside their own building.
So Martin went back to the rink.
And watched.
“I forced myself to come to every game,” Martin told RocketFAN. “I forced myself really to just be a student of the game.”
That might have been the most uncomfortable part of hosting the Memorial Cup.
The Rockets weren’t playing anymore, but Martin still had a front-row seat to watch the teams that were.
He watched Kitchener win the championship. He watched Everett make its run. And instead of trying to escape the disappointment of Kelowna’s early exit, Martin used the experience as a lesson in what his team still needs to become.
“It wasn’t that much fun having to traipse in here and watch other teams compete in a semi-final and compete in a final and hoist the trophy that everybody aims to hoist in your building,” he said.
“But I took a lot away from it.”
Martin believes he saw something different from sitting in the rink than he would have watching the same games on television.
“What a Memorial Cup team looks like, you can watch it on TV, and you never experience it the same as you do sitting in the rink,” he said.
For Martin, that experience has become part of the foundation for a new season.
The Rockets have lost plenty of offensive firepower from last year’s team, and one obvious question heading into 2026-27 is where the goals will come from.
Martin doesn’t pretend that it doesn’t exist.
“I think that’s a fair concern,” he said.
But he also believes the answer isn’t to turn the Rockets into a completely different hockey team suddenly.
“We didn’t have the puck enough,” Martin said of the Memorial Cup. “We didn’t, you know, probably do a good enough job of invading our opponents’ houses.”
That has become a focus early in the new season.
The Rockets want the puck back faster. They want to create more chances. And they want their younger players to understand that generating offence in the Western Hockey League isn’t just about having the puck on your stick.
“You’ve got to be resilient, not just after a win or a loss, but after a turnover,” Martin said. “You have to be resilient to get the puck back.”
That word, resilient, was the one the coaching staff chose on the first day of camp.
It might also describe what Martin wants this team to look like.
The Rockets aren’t going to win every night because they have more talent than the other team. They may not even have more talent.
They need to find other ways to win.
Martin has no interest in blowing up the system simply because the roster has changed.
“The tweaks are smaller than blowing it all up,” he said.
Instead, he wants the Rockets to get better in the middle of the ice.
“I think we spend a lot of time talking about D zone and a lot of time talking about the offensive zone,” Martin said. “I think a major focus for our group this year early on at least is going to be our play in the neutral zone and how we get pucks back and how we re-attack through it.”
There is another challenge waiting for him.
Young players.
Martin knows there will be nights when some of his younger players struggle. He also knows they can’t be rushed through that process.
“The Western Hockey League is not kind to young players,” he said. “It’s a really hard environment to come into.”
That’s where Martin believes his veteran group becomes important.
He likes the DNA of the room and believes the returning players can help bring the younger players along.
“They’re guys that pull the bus,” Martin said. “They’re guys that will pull these guys into the fight.”
And while the Rockets may have more young players this season, Martin doesn’t want to lower the expectations.
He wants patience with development.
He doesn’t want patience with losing.
“I’m going to preach patience off the start,” Martin said, “not patience that we’re going to be OK losing hockey games, but patience as some of these young guys find their grounding in the league.”
That may be the balancing act of this Rockets season.
Develop the young players. Lean on the veterans. Find offence. Defend. And, above all else, find some consistency.
Martin points to last season as evidence of how quickly a team can move up or down the standings.
“There are five games you can point to on the schedule that you’re going, like, there’s no way that that roster should lose to that roster, and you do,” he said.
“That’s the difference between being second in your conference and being fourth in your conference.”
The team that Martin keeps coming back to is Everett.
The Silvertips won the WHL championship last season, and Martin believes their biggest strength wasn’t simply talent.
It was the absence of many bad nights.
“Their B game is better than a lot of teams’ A game because they’re all in on it,” Martin said.
That’s the challenge Martin has put in front of his own team.
The Rockets don’t have to be perfect every night.
But they can’t disappear, either.
“We’ve just got to become a group that can get consistent there,” Martin said. “If we don’t have our A game, our B game has got to be really, really good.”
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Sounds to me like he is softening up the fans for a consistently mediocre season.
Not necessarily.
It’s hard to get a real read on this team right now when you’re missing your top six scorers from a year ago. Once Poletin, Cihar and Frolo return from NHL camps, we’ll have a much better idea of what the offence looks like. Those three are going to be relied on heavily to score consistently, and having a healthy Peyton Kettles for a full season would also be a massive difference maker.
As a coach, I think it’s always good to keep the bar a little lower publicly while keeping it high inside the dressing room.
I suspect that’s exactly what Martin is doing right now.