At present, the London Knights, still led resiliently and with brilliance by head coach Dale Hunter, are prepping for a Memorial Cup semifinal showdown with QMJHL champions the Moncton Wildcats. This was booked after Moncton took the final round robin game via a 6-2 win against hosts the Rimouski Océanic. In the initial phases, Rimouski were the better team by a large margin. While Moncton took the game’s first lead on a goal by Julius Sumpf (ranked 2025 NHL Entry Draft overager) despite getting out-shot, the overwhelming advantage Rimouski had in controlling the puck and dictating the pace of the game had them exit the first period up 2-1, with a SOG advantage of 17-6. However, Moncton would score twice in the second period, then three times in the third (including two empty netters), all uninterrupted. Gabe Smith (Utah Mammoth) was selected as the player of the game for his 2g-2a performance. If London is to progress to the final against WHL champs the Medicine Hat Tigers, this is the final obstacle they will have to overcome.

The overarching, present narratives are clear, obvious, and deserve to be emphasized. This is the last chance for this specific group that has been building towards this result for the last few years. In 2022–23, they were defeated in six games by the Peterborough Petes in the J. Ross Robertson Cup Final. In 2023–24, they captured the OHL championship by sweeping the Oshawa Generals and went undefeated in the Memorial Cup pool stage, but fell to hosts and rivals the Saginaw Spirit 4-3 in the final in heartbreaking fashion. There is plenty of baggage attached here to this group for their own experiences they’ve been through together and how their paths are going to diverge. Mainstays Easton Cowan (Toronto Maple Leafs), captain Denver Barkey (Philadelphia Flyers), Oliver Bonk (Philadelphia Flyers), Jacob Julien (Winnipeg Jets), Kasper Halttunen (San Jose Sharks), and Landon Sim (drafted by the St. Louis Blues but left unsigned; now under contract with the Toronto Marlies) are all having their major junior careers come to an end and have their pro ambitions in mind, with all but Sim already on ELCs (only being on a one-year AHL deal for 2025–26). Newcomer G Austin Elliott will be headed to college next year at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and fellow trade acquisition D Cam Allen will depart for the Washington Capitals system.

To the former point about shared experiences, many of the players on this team have been dedicating their pursuits of group success to their late friend and teammate Abakar Kazbekov, who they suddenly and tragically lost in December of 2022. With this in mind, every triumph has been blissful, but every instance of coming up short being devastating.

This season, they went on a torrid run in the 2025 OHL playoffs, where they dropped only one game in the entire postseason to Oshawa in a finals rematch and were otherwise undefeated. They took their first two round robin games against Moncton and Rimouski, but then fell to Medicine Hat in the round robin’s fifth match, ergo necessitating a semifinal game to take their final crack at winning the CHL’s grand prize before they go their separate ways. Everything this group has done together has shaped them, but one other component feeds into this story as an underpinning: 20 years ago yesterday, the greatest London Knights team – Indeed, very easily arguably the greatest team in both OHL and CHL history – reached the mountain top after a historic campaign. The legacy of this team always resonates and great London teams will always be examined next to it, but perhaps now more than ever (even more than the 2015–16 team, which will get its own retrospective next year). This is the story of the Team of the Century.

The 2004–05 season was a significant one for the OHL, and the entire CHL, due to being able to access all of their best players thanks to the NHL lockout eliminating the greatest ice hockey league in the world’s entire season. The Knights were beneficiaries as they therefore had Corey Perry, Marc Methot, Dave Bolland, Rob Schremp, and Brandon Prust in their clutches when they might not have otherwise (additionally, Dan Girardi had never been undrafted by an NHL team, but signed his first pro contract after a successful visit to the New York Rangers’ training camp after this season ended, making him another pro caliber player on this roster). That said, it additionally meant the competitive field was going to be more difficult than normal. How would this team, which had become a fearsome competitor under the ownership and leadership of ex-NHLers Dale and Mark Hunter and Basil McRae, respond to the field becoming what it had?

As it would turn out, they were quite prepared, as they began the season with a CHL record unbeaten streak, which lasted 31 games and had them going 29-0-2, bookended by a 4-3 regulation road win and a 4-3 overtime win at home against archrivals the Kitchener Rangers. This was only the beginning of their dominance, as they ended the regular season with a video game record of 59-7-2, good for 120 points and a capturing of the Hamilton Spectator Trophy that was so overwhelming that the team with the next most points, the Owen Sound Attack, trailed them by 30. The offensive numbers of the team were gaudy, for certain, as they scored 310 goals and had some great individual seasons within their ranks. Perry recorded 130 points to lead the entire OHL and LW Dylan Hunter (son of head coach Dale) placed right behind him in second with 104. Schremp was fourth in the OHL with 90 and Bolland was ninth with 85. However, framing it in the context of goal differential is even more absurd. The Knights surrendered just 125 goals in the regular season. Team captain/D Danny Syvret (who would be drafted by Edmonton in round three that summer) led the OHL in +/- with a whopping +71, while Perry, D Bryan Rodney, Methot, and Hunter occupied the 2, 3, 4, and 5 spots league-wide (+66, +55, +52, and +50, respectively). Members of this team would walk away with the following individual trophies:

– Dale Hunter: Matt Leyden Trophy (Coach of the Year)

– Corey Perry: Red Tilson Trophy (MVP), Eddie Powers Memorial Trophy (regular season scoring leader), Jim Mahon Memorial Trophy (RW with most points)

– Danny Syvret: Max Kaminsky Trophy (most gentlemanly player)

– Gerald Coleman and Adam Dennis: Dave Pinkney Trophy (goaltenders with lowest team GAA)

This team was clearly a powerhouse, and additional hardware was theirs to lose.

The opening round of the postseason did not ask much of the Knights, as they swept the Guelph Storm in four games. The Windsor Spitfires were also no match for London, being swept in the conference semifinals. It wasn’t until London reached the conference finals that they finally lost a playoff game, but even so, they defeated their arch-nemeses Kitchener in five games to win the Wayne Gretzky Trophy. Without much more trouble, the Knights dispatched the Ottawa 67’s in five games to capture their first ever J. Ross Robertson Cup. Perry captured the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as playoff MVP by way of his 38 points in 18 games played. As Memorial Cup hosts that season, the Knights wanted to enter the big dance with league hardware and the status of unequivocal belonging. They had it, but there was still one more job to complete. What was curious about this Memorial Cup is that, despite being the best team across the CHL that year, the Knights had never won a Memorial Cup but their three opponents (the 67’s, Rimouski, and the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets) all had. They were determined to change that.

The Knights commenced the round robin against the QMJHL champion Rimouski Océanic, led by 2005 number one overall pick Sidney Crosby. Both Crosby and Perry (future Stanley Cup champions and NHL MVPs) scored in regulation, but it would be Methot who scored in overtime and be the hero. London subsequently defeated Kelowna 4-2, with both Perry and C Drew Larman scoring two goals. To close it out and clinch their auto-berth to the finals, the Knights defeated Ottawa yet again by a score of 5-2, with five different goal scorers finding twine. With Rimouski beating Ottawa 7-4 in the semifinal, the Knights would have to face Crosby once more. They would have no trouble, though, beating the Océanic 4-0, closing it out with another game featuring all goals being tallied by unique goal scorers. For the first time ever, the Knights had captured the CHL’s grand prize. Naturally, the host champions were well represented in the tournament superlatives. Perry was awarded yet another MVP trophy by being selected as the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy recipient, while Dennis was awarded the Hap Emms Memorial Trophy as best goaltender. Dennis, Syvret, Perry, and C Dan Fritsche (who scores what ultimately stood as the championship winning goal) were all selected to the tournament all-star team.

In 2018, after the 100th Memorial Cup, the 2004–05 Knights were voted The Team of the Century. It is only right that this team is so well remembered considering the manner in which they conquered not just the OHL, but the absolute top of the CHL’s competition that season, as well as the legacies that were spawned out of it by way of producing a number of respectable NHL careers. The shadow that was cast by it has only been totally overcome by just one Knights team since by way of the 2016 Memorial Cup winning squad which featured the likes of Mitch Marner, Matthew Tkachuk, Christian Dvorak, Olli Juolevi, Max Jones, Victor Mete, Evan Bouchard and Robert Thomas and is recognized as a juggernaut in its own right. For now, that marks the only other time the Knights have captured the biggest junior hockey trophy of them all. In just under two hours, though, we shall see if this other very talented and deep group will have a crack at joining their 2005 and 2016 predecessors in hockey immortality.