Ed Chynoweth Cup
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| Award details | |
|---|---|
| Sport | Ice hockey |
| Given for | Western Hockey League playoff champion |
| History | |
| First award | 1966 |
| Most recent | Brandon Wheat Kings |
The Ed Chynoweth Cup is an ice hockey club championship trophy awarded to the playoff champion of the Western Hockey League (WHL). Originally called the President's Cup when the league was founded in 1966, the trophy was renamed in 2007 to honour Ed Chynoweth's long service to junior hockey in Canada. The WHL champion earns a berth into the Memorial Cup tournament, Canada's major junior championship. The Kamloops Blazers have won the most championships with six, followed by the Medicine Hat Tigers with five. The Spokane Chiefs were the first team to win the renamed trophy in the 2007–08 WHL season. The current (2015–16) holders of the Ed Chynoweth Cup are the Brandon Wheat Kings.
The WHL was founded in 1966 by seven teams from Alberta and Saskatchewan who were hoping to improve the quality of junior hockey in western Canada. Despite gaining approval from the governing bodies of both provinces, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA) objected to the formation of the interprovincial league, refusing to sanction the circuit and suspending all players and officials who participated in the league from participation in any CAHA league or event. Declared an "outlaw league" by the CAHA, the WHL's founders chose to play on, though the league was ruled ineligible to participate in the Memorial Cup, Canada's national junior championship.
The first President's Cup champion was the Moose Jaw Canucks in 1967. In 1971, the CAHA reorganized the top level of junior hockey into two tiers, sanctioning the WHL as the top league in western Canada and one of three leagues that formed the "Major-Junior" tier, the others being the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) (today the Ontario Hockey League (OHL)) and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), The 1971 champion Edmonton Oil Kings thus faced the Quebec Remparts in the 1972 Memorial Cup final, though, it nearly failed to materialize as the OHA and QMJHL initially refused to face the western champion. The Oil Kings were defeated by Quebec in an abbreviated series. The two teams played a best-of-three series, in which the first team with two victories won the title, as opposed to the normal best-of-seven (first team to four wins). Three years later, in 1974, the Regina Pats became the first WHL champion to win the national title.
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