Memorial Cup team preview: The WHL champion Seattle Thunderbirds

The Memorial Cup begins Friday May 26 and will run until June 4. Four teams from the three major junior hockey leagues in Canada will be competing in Kamloops for the highly-prestigious trophy.

Team previews will be published in four parts between May 23-26, and will showcase the teams and players attending the 2023 Memorial Cup.

For the third time in franchise history, the Seattle Thunderbirds will be competing in the Memorial Cup.

The only team from the United States in the tournament, Seattle dominated in the WHL regular season with 54 wins and that success translated to the playoffs, only losing three games this postseason.

Seattle's roster is filled with 10 NHL-drafted prospects and six players who NHL scouts have their eyes on for this year's upcoming draft.

With all this talent, the Thunderbirds dominated their way through the playoffs, which started with sweeps of the Kelowna Rockets and Prince George Cougars in the first two rounds.

Seattle entered the third round against the Kamloops Blazers unbeaten and went on to win the first two games of the series.

The Blazers, who also have a stacked roster, fought back and won game three, but Seattle followed suit and scored eight goals in game four, with the help of a hat trick from Dylan Guenther.

The Thunderbirds would go on to lose gave five, but come back and close out the series in game six.

Seattle's final opponent was the number one overall team in the league, the Winnipeg Ice, who had also been on a hot streak after sweeping the Saskatoon Blades in their previous series.

That momentum continued for the Ice, winning game one 3-2, but that did not last for long, Seattle came back and won four straight to complete the gentleman's sweep.

This is the second time the Thunderbirds have won the WHL championship and both occasions have happened since 2017.

Their goaltender, Thomas Milic, was named the 2023 WHL playoffs Most Valuable Player, finishing the playoffs with an impressive 1.95 goals-against average, .933 save percentage and 16 wins.

Milic is a ranked NHL draft prospect and was a standout on Team Canada’s gold medal team at the World Juniors this past January.

Other players to keep an eye on include the WHL playoffs leading scorer, Dylan Guenther, along with Jared Davidson, Brad Lambert and former Rockets captain Colton Dach.

Seattle has a strong back-end as well, which features NHL-drafted players Luke Prokop, Kevin Korchinski and Nolan Allan.

Seattle plays their first game Saturday, May 27, against the OHL champion Peterborough Petes, who we previewed on Tuesday.