Viveiros savours second trip to Memorial Cup
When Manny Viveiros thinks back to the 1985 Memorial Cup, there are a number of things that stand out.
The first one is obvious.
“It was a long time ago; a real long time ago,” the Swift Current Broncos’ bench boss says with a laugh. “Even though it was a long time ago, I still remember exactly how we did it and every game during the tournament, where we stayed, all those type of things. It’s something you’ll never ever forget. I told our kids, ‘I want you to enjoy this as much as possible and while we’re here let’s make the most of it.’
“This doesn’t happen very often.”
It has happened twice for Viveiros, who was an 18-yearold defenceman with the Prince Albert Raiders when they won the 1985 WHL title and went on to win the Memorial Cup in Shawinigan and Drummondville, Que.
Viveiros is making his longawaited return for this year’s tournament in Regina, where he’s calling the shots behind the bench and behind the scenes as the head coach and director of player personnel with the WHLchampion Broncos.
Needless to say, a lot has changed over the past 33 years.
“There wasn’t social media back then and all those type of things,” notes Viveiros, 52, who’s in his second season with the Broncos. “They did an incredible job way back then. (But now) it’s big; it’s really big. It really is special with the media coverage and how they’ve done such a wonderful job.
“I’ve been to world championships over in Europe. I’ve been over to the Olympics in Sochi and I’ve seen what’s involved and how first-class they’ve done things and this ranks right up there with everything.”
The growth of the Memorial Cup also translates to more distractions for the teams. That’s another thing Viveiros discussed with his players before they left Swift Current, which is the smallest market in the WHL.
“This week is not a time when we’re going spend a lot of time with our families. It’s going to be just our kids together as a team and kind of isolate them. Not to say you can’t enjoy it. You have to have time to enjoy it a little bit but for the most part our focus is all hockey.”
The CHL’s championship tournament may be a different animal than the one he remembers, but there are still lessons Viveiros learned in 1985 that apply to today. He vividly recalls losing 6-2 to Shawinigan in his first game at the ‘85 championship before bouncing back with four straight wins en route to the Memorial Cup title.
“It was a wake-up call for us,” he says. “We felt pretty good about ourselves after winning the league championship. The very first game we came out and didn’t play anywhere near the way we needed to play and we got popped. Then we got back on track after that and played pretty well after that.”
Viveiros had hoped a similar trend would develop for the Broncos, who opened the 2018 tournament with a 4-3 overtime loss to the Acadie-Bathurst Titan.
Swift Current was tied 1-1 with the Hamilton Bulldogs at press time on Monday. The WHL champions conclude their round-robin schedule on Wednesday against the Regina Pats.