Tsawwassen’s Brandon McMillan concluded 2022 by helping his Swiss hockey team produce one of its biggest wins in franchise history.
McMillan’s Ambri-Piotta captured the Spengler Cup with a 3-2 shootout win over Czech-based Sparta Prague on Saturday in Davos, Switzerland.
It was the club’s first championship of any kind since the 2000 International Ice Hockey Federation’s (IIHF) Continental Cup in 2000. Ambri-Piotta has never won the National League Championship and last captured the Swiss Cup in 1962.
The 32-year-old forward from Tsawwassen took his professional career to Switzerland’s National League after an extensive stint in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) where he played seven seasons on three different teams, including three with Riga Dynamo.
The South Delta Minor Hockey product enjoyed a standout junior career in the Western Hockey League with the Kelowna Rockets, winning the Ed Chynoweth Cup back in 2009. A year later he played for Canada at the World U20 Championships, compiling eight points in six games while earning a silver medal.
After being selected in the third round by Anaheim in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft, McMillan played 91 games over three seasons with the Ducks before two more NHL stops in Arizona and Vancouver. He then took his career overseas, spending a year in Germany with Ingolstadt before heading to the KHL.
