Even in defeat on the biggest stage in major junior hockey, Everett Silvertips forward Zackary Shantz knew he’d been part of something special.
“I can’t even really put it into words, just the best season of my life,” the over-ager told reporters Sunday after the Ontario Hockey League-champion Kitchener Rangers beat “From the coaching staff to all the players I just want to say thank you, and it just meant so much to me. Just wish we could play together forever.”
Everett 6-2 in Kelowna, B.C. to capture the Memorial Cup national championship.
The game seemed to turn early in the second period when, down 2-1, Shantz appeared to score on a wild bounce from beside the net, as the puck leapt up and hit him a few feet off the ice before deflecting into the Kitchener net.
A video review of the play had other ideas, showing Shantz – who played 117 games with the Regina Pats before his January 2025 trade to Everett – directing the puck in with his arm, and the goal was waved off.
The Rangers’ third goal followed about 13 minutes later, shortly after Kitchener held the Silvertips in their own zone for a full 1:35.
Then, in the final minute of the period, Humboldt-raised defenceman Kayd Ruedig (holding) and Shantz (cross-checking) both found themselves in the penalty box.
That set the stage for Kitchener to put the pedal down with a pair of power play goals in the first 63 seconds of the third to stake out a 5-1 lead.
“Maybe after the goal got called off,” Shantz concurred, asked where he felt the game got away from Everett. “I took a bad penalty at the end there.”
Carter Bear, a first-round Detroit Red Wings draft pick, replied for the Tips but Kitchener held Everett to eight shots through the final 20 minutes and put the game away with an empty-net goal with 1:37 to play.
Kitchener forward Sam O’Reilly had a goal and three assists in the victory, and was named the tournament’s most valuable player after the game.
The result also extended the Western Hockey League’s championship drought at the Memorial Cup to 12 years.
Shantz, who will play NCAA Division I hockey next season with St. Cloud State University, finished the tournament – and his major junior career – with two goals in five games for a Silvertips team that finished first overall in the WHL’s regular season standings then captured its first-ever Ed Chynoweth Cup league title to qualify for the Memorial Cup.
Ruedig and Shantz’s former Regina Pats teammate Jaxsin Vaughan meanwhile each contributed a goal and two assists at the tournament, with Vaughan tacking on a fight-of-the-year candidate in Everett’s semifinal win over Chicoutimi.
Silvertips captain Tarin Smith, who hails from Porcupine Plain, had season-ending surgery after suffering a shoulder injury in Everett’s first-round WHL playoff sweep of the Portland Winterhawks.
