Each day in the lead-up to the NHL Draft on June 25-26 in Los Angeles, Yahoo! Sports will feature one of the Central Scouting Bureau's Top 100 North American prospects from the Canadian Hockey League.

Our first prospect is Mississauga-St. Michael's Majors forward Devante Smith-Pelly, who is the 76th-rated North American skater. Smith-Pelly, a Toronto native, finished his second season with the Majors tied for team scoring with 29 goals and 33 assists for 62 points in 60 games. He blossomed this season, more than doubling his point production from his rookie season with the Majors (13 goals, 12 assists in 57 games).

He was the Majors' first pick in the 2008 OHL priority selection (eighth-overall) coming out of the Toronto Jr. Canadiens, who were OHL Cup champions in 2008. Included on Smith-Pelly's Jr. Canadiens squad were fellow NHL draft eligible players John McFarland (Sudbury Wolves) and Tyler Toffoli (Ottawa 67's).

The 5-foot-11, 180-pound left-winger isn't particularly known for

In advance of the 92nd MasterCard Memorial Cup, which opens Friday in Brandon, Man., we take a look at the four teams vying for the toughest trophy to win in hockey. Presenting the Windsor Spitfires, the Ontario Hockey League champion and defending Memorial Cup champ.

Burning questions:

CAN they rein themselves in and stay out of those basketball-on-ice freewheeling frenzies that are fun to watch, but open the door to losing to a less talented team?

WAS that the real Philipp Grubauer in the OHL final, when he put up a .927 save percentage in the four-game sweep of Barrie?

WILL Taylor Hall play his way into being the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft next month?

Storyline: Out to become the first repeat champion in 15 seasons and coming in with a bit of a chip on their shoulders after and next season's tournament was awarded to the Mississauga-St. Michael's Majors.

In a couple paragraphs: The Ewen Theory states the two biggest indicators of success in the WHL have been having a good-sized

The Moncton Wildcats seem like that team which is dangerous because of what it doesn't have.

Coach Danny Flynn's Wildcats, who wrapped up the second Quebec Major Junior Hockey League final in six games with a 7-4 win over Saint John on Monday, have gone about it in an efficient way. They closed out the young Sea Dogs in impressive fashion, outscoring them by an aggreggate 11-2 from the opening puck drop on Saturday through the end of the second period of the series clincher. By that point, they had a five-goal cushion and it was all over but the crying.

The question is how much of that was the Wildcats being brutally efficient and how much of that was the youth of the Sea Dogs, who were down to five defencemen after four-year vet Yann Sauve was ruled out for Game 6 with an injury. What wins at the league level doesn't always play at the MasterCard Memorial Cup, plus Moncton has a tough one right off the hop on Saturday against the Calgary Hitmen.

The Wildcats' run through the QMJHL has

A few, a glorious few of your junior hockey headlines on that rare fifth Friday in April.

WHL

The Tri-City Americans have been better on the road (6-2) than at home (6-3) during the playoffs. There's a whole lot of mutual admiration between those teams ahead of Game 1 tonight at Pengrowth Saddledome. (Calgary Sun, Tri-City Herald)

Playing in a final against Calgary is a homecoming for Tri-City 'tender Drew Owsley, who hails from southern Alberta. (Calgary Sun)

Both coaches in the Dub final are in their first year on the job, or as Tri-City's Jim Hiller put it to Calgary counterpart Mike Williamson: "This time last year both you and I were unemployed." (Calgary Herald)

Vancouver Giants winger Brett Breitkreuz gutted it out during the post-season with a broken rib. (The Dub Hub)

OHL

Veterans Mark Cundari (short-handed goal among his three points) and Scott Timmins were the Windsor Spitfires' game-changers in a second one-goal win (5-4) over the Barrie Colts in the league final. Game 3 is

Jonathan Toews getting away might have been one of the best things that ever happened to the Tri-City Americans.

Little did anyone know that the Americans drafting a Winnipeg whiz kid No. 1 overall in the 2003 WHL bantam draft would help the U.S.-based team build a pipeline into the largest city in Canada without a CHL team. Toews opting for the NCAA at North Dakota worked out -- he's won an Olympic gold medal and is starring for the Chicago Blackhawks. Meantime, the Americans, in the WHL final for the first time in the franchise's 22 seasons in Washington state, boast nine players from Winnipeg.

Only two of the Winnipeg Americans -- or Tri-City 'Tobans, if you prefer -- broke into the WHL with other teams. 'Pegging their team-building on a unique draft strategy is ideal for a U.S.-based team playing in a Canadian league and a province which feels like it doesn't always get its due in hockey circles.

"It used to be where WHL teams were wary of drafting kids from Manitoba, because there

Olaf Kolzig's first post-playing season attests to how anything is possible with public trust.

It will be a nice anniversary gift if the Tri-City Americans are still playing on May 19, the mid-point of the MasterCard Memorial Cup. That's when original Ams and recently retired NHLers Kolzig and Stu Barnes, along with partners Dennis Loman and Bob Tory, will mark five years since being approved as owners of the Kennewick, Wash.-based club. Kolzig, the former Vezina Trophy winner who retired as a player last season, says it has been "night and day" since they came on the scene in 2005.

"The city's back on board, the passion is back, and it's the passion we, Stu and myself, saw as players the first couple years (1988-89, 1989-90) when the team moved down from New Westminster (B.C.)," the man who was universally known as Olie the Goalie across his 16-season NHL career, mostly with the Washington Capitals, said on Tuesday.

"It's gone from an attitude of, 'we don't care about you guys

Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin have another score to settle on Wednesday in their mostly media-manufactured rivalry.

The co-faves to be the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft on June 25 in Los Angeles (some have snarked that being taken No. 2 by Boston might be more favourable) are finalists for the Red Tilson Trophy as OHL player of the year, along with Toronto Maple Leafs prospect Nazem Kadri, who plays for London.

This boils down to how the voters put each player's 106-point season (yes, they tried for the scoring title) into context.

Hall did his damage in 57 games with an offensively loaded Windsor club which finished first in the Western Conference. He had a hand in 32.4 per cent of the Spitfires' goals (shootout winners might get counted in the goals-for column in the standings, but not here). That percentage would probably be in the 36-37 per cent range if not for the time he missed due to world junior team commitments.

Seguin, playing in 63 games, scored or assisted on 43.6 per cent of

Whatever the reasons, the Windsor Spitfires are harder to get rid off than the last guest at a party.

It is easy to say it now that Windsor has forced a Game 7 in the OHL Western Conference final. What's striking is how people are less than flabbergasted at coach Bob Boughner's Spitfires, who did all their damage in a 20-minute span of tonight's series-tying 6-4 win, getting back on even terms with the Kitchener Rangers.

People saw this movie last year, when the Spitfires became the first CHL team to win the MasterCard Memorial Cup after playing in the tiebreaker game. You could get a thesis out of why they have ended up behind the eight-ball -- going down 3-0 in this series, losing their first two games at the national championship, and so on.

As for the comeback, the question is how much should be attributed to the concentrated power of will, how much goes to coaching and how much goes to Windsor's talent. Sometimes it takes a few games of a series for the natural order to prevail.