The Memorial Cup begins this weekend in Regina. The tournament is the culmination of the major junior hockey season and will see four teams vying for the national title.

The tournament hosts this year are the Regina Pats, who are celebrating their 100th anniversary this season, and it is also the 100th anniversary of the Memorial Cup. Representing the Western Hockey League will be the Swift Current Broncos. The Ontario Hockey League is represented by the Hamilton Bulldogs, and the Acadie-Bathurst Titan are from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

The week-long tournament will see some of the best players in major junior hockey competing for the title, and many are wondering who will come out on top. After all, this is a tournament with four teams who have little exposure to each other during the season, with the exception of the two Saskatchewan teams.

To figure out who would be a safe pick to win the tournament, we caught up with the head coach of the Weyburn Red Wings, Wes Rudy. While the Red Wings are a junior A team, there is still a lot of movement between the levels of hockey, and Rudy is familiar with the teams, especially the two from the Land of Living Skies.

“Really like the way Swift Current plays, and they’ve battled hard here through some really tough series, and I feel that their games have been getting better with every series as they go along,” Rudy explained. He wasn’t too quick to jump on their bandwagon yet, however.

“Regina took them to seven, and was short a few key players in that series.”

With the calibre of play seen from the two teams from Saskatchewan, Rudy is predicting one of those two teams will be the ones raising the trophy at the end of the tournament.

The Memorial Cup runs in Regina until May 27th.