KITCHENER RANGERS<\/p>\n
Coach: Jussi Ahokas<\/p>\n
Previous Memorial Cup appearances: 1981, 1982, 1984, 1990, 2003, 2008<\/p>\n
Memorial Cup championships: 1982, 2003<\/p>\n
How they got here: The Rangers won their fifth J. Ross Robertson Cup with a four-game sweep of Barrie in the OHL championship. Kitchener finished 16-2 during the OHL playoffs to return to the Memorial Cup for the first time in 18 years. Forward Sam O’Reilly led the way with 28 points (17 goals, 11 assists) in 18 playoff games and won the Wayne Gretzky<\/a>\u00a0“99” Award as OHL playoff MVP, capping a stellar season in which he claimed the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHL most outstanding player.<\/p>\n NHL prospects: Forwards Sam O’Reilly<\/a> (Tampa Bay Lightning, trade; selected No. 32 by Edmonton Oilers, 2024),\u00a0Jack\u00a0Pridham<\/a> (Chicago Blackhawks, No. 92, 2024),\u00a0Lucas\u00a0Ellinas<\/a> (Ottawa Senators, No. 104, 2024),\u00a0Christian\u00a0Humphreys<\/a> (Colorado Avalanche, No. 215, 2024),\u00a0Luca Romano<\/a> (New York Islanders, No. 74, 2025),\u00a0Gabriel\u00a0Chiarot<\/a> (Vancouver Canucks, No. 175, 2025),\u00a0Matthew\u00a0Hlacar<\/a> (Toronto Maple Leafs, No. 217, 2025); defensemen\u00a0Matthew Andonovski<\/a> (Ottawa Senators, No. 140, 2023 NHL Draft),\u00a0Jared Woolley<\/a> (Los Angeles Kings, No. 164, 2024), Cameron Reid<\/a>\u00a0(Nashville Predators, No. 21, 2025),\u00a0Andrew\u00a0MacNiel<\/a> (Montreal Canadiens, No. 189, 2025); goalie Christian Kirsch<\/a> (San Jose Sharks, No. 116, 2024).
\u00a0
2026 NHL Draft-eligible prospects:\u00a0Forward Weston Cameron (No. 196, North American skaters); defenseman Alexander Bilecki (No. 49, North American skaters); goalie Jason Schaubel (No. 36, North American goalies).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KITCHENER RANGERS Coach: Jussi Ahokas Previous Memorial Cup appearances: 1981, 1982, 1984, 1990, 2003, 2008 Memorial Cup championships:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-686669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}