Bring back the bad taste

When the tables eventually turned, and the Rockets were superior, the distaste for one another wasn’t lost, but the games didn’t have that same luster.

It may have been fun at first, seeing Blazers forward Scottie Upshall come unglued at Prospera Place, but soon the Rockets and their fans wanted to see more competitive hockey against teams like the high powered Vancouver Giants and Portland Winterhawks.

When you look at the Rockets and Blazers track record over the years, sadly, outside of last season, they don’t seem to be really good at the exact same time.

In the Kelowna Rockets heyday, between 2002 and 2009, the Blazers were – bad.

Appearing in three straight Memorial Cups in 2003, 2004 and 2005, the Blazers couldn’t win 40 games if they tried, exiting out of the first round of the playoffs seven times in nine season’s, while missing the playoff’s entirely under Mark Ferner in 2005-2006 and with Guy Charron at the helm in 2010-2011.

During the 2008-2009 season, the year the Rockets won their third of four WHL titles, they ran the table against the Blazers, winning all nine meetings.

The same thing happened in 2013-2014 (8-0-0-0) and again in 2017-2018 (8-0-0-0).

The tide eventually turned in the Jason Smith/Adam Foote era, when the Blazers won seven of the eight meetings (2019-2020).

Off the ice, while not exactly a feud, finger wagging came courtesy of Blazers owner Tom Galardi, who couldn’t bite his tongue when Kelowna, not Kamloops was awarded the 2020 Memorial Cup.

Galardi told Marty Hastings of Kamloops This Week at the time, “Yeah, it was our turn. It should have been ours. It was the wrong thing. The league did the wrong thing.”

No griping now from Galardi, who also owns the NHL’s Dallas Stars, and has an estimated family worth of 2.24 billion dollars, who’s team won the bidding rights to hosts the ‘Q’, ‘O’ and WHL champion this May.

Rockets General Manager Bruce Hamilton isn’t crying over spilled milk, even though the pandemic cancelled the 2020 Memorial Cup, before it was awarded to a team two hours down the road.

“They will do an extremely good job”, Hamilton told RocketFAN. “They have a great committee there and they’ve done a great job with their building. They’ve upgraded it and modernized it. That is why they are going to get a great chance to showcase it across the country”.

Last season, the Rockets and Blazers met a staggering 14 times, with Kelowna winning the opening seven games before Kamloops won six consecutive times.

Was the seasonal series too much of a good thing? Likely. It felt like a piece of pumpkin pie you covet at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but if served at the conclusion of every meal as a desert, it no longer delights the palate.

The belief is with the team’s seeing each other 10 times this season, now that interconference play is back in business, less will likely mean more.

Playing a whopping four, back-to-back home and home series won’t hurt fan interest either.

You would think quality over quantity will awaken an old rivalry.

by Regan Bartel

Bring back the bad taste

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