OTTAWA – The Kitchener Rangers captured their second straight Ontario Hockey League championship here Sunday night with a 4-1 win over the Ottawa 67s.
     If gave the Kitchener team a 9-1 victory in the eight-point series making the Rangers only the fourth team in the last 33 years to win back-to-back OHL crowns.
     The next step is the Memorial Cup.
     The round-robin portion of that week-long tournament begins Saturday in Hull, Que. Against the Western Hockey League champion Portland Winter Hawks and the Sherbrooke Beavers of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
     In their last 38 games this year, the Rangers lost only four times.
 
 

     OTTAWA -  A team wins two straight championships and comparison questions are inevitably asked: Which victory was the most exciting?  Which team was the greatest?
     “It’s always a great feeling when you win, but I think last year was more emotional.  We won on eotion and hard work, whereas this year we had more talent.”
     The comment by defenceman Joel Levesque reflected the feelings of the 12 Kitchener veterans Sunday night after the amazing Rangers captured their second straight Ontario Hockey League championship.  They breezed past the Ottawa 67s 4-1 to take a surprisingly easy 9-1 victory in the eight-point series in which many people figured the 67s – overall leaders in the regular season standings, five points ahead of Kitchener – would provide a tougher battle.
     In the end, Ottawa offered no more resistance than the Windsor Spitfires and the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, whom the Rangers also stomped on in their relentless drive to the Memorial Cup tournament.
     Only the fourth team in the last 33 years to win back-to-back OHL crowns.  The Rangers now will attempt to succeed where they failed last year in Windsor, when they reached the Canadian championship game but lost 5-2 to the Cornwall Royals.  Standing in their way of national hockey glory are Western Hockey League champion Portland Winter Hawks, the first US challenger for the Memorial Cup, and Sherbrooke Beavers, easy victors in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.  The round-robin portion of the week-long tournament begins Saturday in Hull, Que.
     “This year, we were picked to win (the OHL title),” sensational left winger Jeff Larmer said.
     “We’ve got more style, and more finesse than last year, when most of our players were 17 and 18 and we had only four or five last-year guys.  I don’t think there was a playoff game this year in which we didn’t outshoot the opposition.”
     Last year’s triumph – in which the Rangers rose from the Emms Division basement and snowballed to their first league title in their 18-year history – may have been more dramatic than the championship they nailed down Sunday.
     But in a comparison of the talent on each team, this year’s version unquestionably is superior.
After the Rangers lost only two of 18 OHL playoff games last season, people wondered what the Rangers could do for an encore.  This year they lost only one of 15 games, complied a 12-1-2 record, outscored the opposition 71-37 and posted a remarkable goals-against average of 2.4.
     The two-year reign surely ranks among the most awesome eras in Canadian junior hockey history.  Rangers lost only one of their last 27 OHL playoff games and were beaten in only three of 33 playoff contests, boasting a won-lost-tied record of 23-3-7.  In their last 38 games this year they’ve lost only four times.
    “The only thing I can say is that it gives me a little satisfaction,” said Joe Crozier, who this year took over the coach-general manager job from Orval Tessier, whose Moncton Hawks have a 1-0 lead over Binghampton in the American Hockey League finals.
     “Last season, I was fired after three months with Toronto Maple Leafs,” Crozier said.  “This year things turned around and something was finally on my side.”
     Once again The Rangers were led by their big line, which some observers have called the greatest Rangers line ever.
     Bellows opened the scoring with a scrappy goal on a rebound.
     His second goal was anything but “garbage.”  He drove a 20-foot slapshot past Jim Ralph at 1:46 of the third period to send the Rangers ahead 3-1 and kill any comeback hopes of the 67s who were never really in the game.
     Rangers dominated the first period as they outshot Ottawa 17-8 and jumped ahead 2-1, a margin that would have been doubled if it weren’t for the typical heroics of Ralph, who handled a dozen dangerous shots.  The final two periods offered only a token performance by both teams as both knew what the outcome would be.
     The Ottawa fans realized the 67s were in a hopeless situation as the Rangers needed only a tie while the 67s had to win four straight games.  Only 4,457 fans showed up at the 9,300-seat Civic Center and one of the banners read: “Goodbye Jim Ralph.  We’ll miss you.  Good luck.”
     After the game – which was the tamest of the series and had only 13 penalties and one fight – OHL commissioner Dave Branch announced he has reinstated Ranger forward reinstated Ranger forward Mike Moher.  Moher and Ottawa’s Mike James were involved in incidents in the third game of the series in Ottawa and Branch suspended them for the rest of the playoff, with the suspensions to be reviewed once the series was over.