Memorial Cup reps were visiting Soo when person stabbed near Gardens

Will Sault Ste. Marie win the right to host next year’s Memorial Cup tournament? An announcement is expected any day now.

In the meantime, Soo Greyhounds president Tim Lukenda confirmed to SooToday that the team’s bid to host the 2024 championship endured a bit of bad timing last week: on the same morning that two selection committee officials were in town to tour the arena, police responded to a high-profile stabbing incident on Ron Francis Way.

As SooToday reported on March 17, a car crashed into a parking partition on the Bay Street side of the arena, prompting police to encircle the scene in yellow police tape. One person was sent to hospital with stab wounds, and police have yet to announce any charges.

Two representatives had travelled to the Sault for a pre-arranged Memorial Cup site visit: one was from the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) and the other was a consultant hired by the CHL. They had left their hotel that Friday morning and were just arriving at the Gardens when police rushed to the rink.

“It was unfortunate timing,” said Lukenda, who was already at the Gardens at the time. “Unfortunately, [the committee members] were right in the middle of it. Not ideal. Not the ‘Welcome to Sault Ste. Marie’ that any of us would want. But at the end of the day, I’m confident that they understood that this was a highly unusual incident and didn’t represent Sault Ste. Marie.”

Both league representatives provided statements to police before carrying on with the tour. Despite how things started, Lukenda said he “felt very good about” the visit.

The Memorial Cup bid process has been ongoing since the Ontario Hockey League announced in late-November that the Hounds were among four OHL clubs that planned to bid on the annual national championship. The Saginaw Spirit, Niagara IceDogs, and Kingston Frontenacs are the other three teams.

While it involved a lot of legwork to get to this point, Lukenda feels confident.

“It’s been a long process,” he said. “We feel like we did everything possible to put forward the best case for our city to be the host.”

Lukenda said the organization hasn’t been told exactly when the announcement on the host would be made, only that it would come by the end of March.

After visiting the Sault, the committee representatives were scheduled to head to Saginaw. Lukenda said he wasn’t sure if they had already visited Niagara or Kingston.

After going through the early stages of the bid process three years ago when the team announced a plan to bid on the 2021 tournament that was ultimately cancelled due to COVID-19, Lukenda said the new bid this year allowed the organization to expand on the framework already in place.

“The first time was sort of our dry run,” Lukenda said. “When we had a chance to reflect and start the process again, we used the work that we did before as our starting point, but we did a lot to enhance our bid.”

Lukenda added that the team received some help from Brooks Creative to “put together a first-class presentation.”

Lukenda went on to say that the organization approached the tournament as “much more than a hockey tournament.”

He said the tournament would include daily concerts on the waterfront among other events in hopes that it would “distinguish our bid.”

“They’re all things that we think the community would support and rally around and it would make it a memorable event,” Lukenda added.