While everyone around Fort Wayne was talking about how the Komets were playing for back-to-back championships, the players never mentioned it.

“You never want to jinx it,” goaltender Nick Boucher said.

Maybe, but there were other reasons.

“There are guys who were here last year and guys who weren't,” defenseman Kevin Bertram said. “You really don't want to hear about what the team before you did. We wanted to win the championship for us, not for back-to-back or the guys who were here last year.”

But now they'll talk about it forever.

After 57 years, the third-longest tenure in minor-league hockey, there are not too many firsts remaining for the Komets, but they erased the biggest one left Friday night by successfully defending a playoff championship. With a Memorial Coliseum crowd of 10,480 cheering them on, the Komets blasted the Muskegon Lumberjacks 4-1 to win the IHL final series 4-1. The Turner Cup was removed from the Komets' trophy case two weeks ago and presented to IHL President Paul Pickard, who gave it right back Friday.

“From the franchise's perspective, it is an unbelievable accomplishment,” Komets president Michael Franke said. “To think that 57 years have gone by and not one championship team had ever repeated; when you stop and think of the number of championship teams in that 57 years, there really aren't that many. That's how hard it is to win just one. I don't know if this will ever happen again.”

This back-to-back is special because the Komets came so close over the years but always failed. A Merv Dubchak goal that would have forced a Game 7 in 1964 against Toledo was ruled offsides, and Fort Wayne lost in overtime. Then the Komets were shocked by Dayton in the 1966 semifinals. Only six of the 1973 champions returned as most of the players won another title the next year in the American Hockey League with Hershey.

After 1993's miracle 12-0 sweep, the Komets probably should have won again in 1994 but blew a 5-0 lead at home in Game 4 before losing 7-6 in triple overtime. The 2004 Komets won the regular-season championship but scored only four goals in a semifinal rout by Muskegon.

Midway though this season, another chance also seemed doomed. Last year there were only a couple of major injuries as the Komets breezed through the regular season and became the first IHL team to rally from a 3-1 finals deficit to win. Port Huron forced the Komets to play with more passion, emotion and resiliency than they knew they had.

That was good training for this year as more than 300 man games lost to injury meant coach Al Sims was able to use his planned-for regular lineup only twice against a much-improved IHL. The top four teams finished within two wins of each other, but the Komets finally got most of their lineup on the ice and closed with a 20-2-1 tear to win their third regular-season title in a row. Then they had to play the postseason without leading scorer P.C. Drouin, who suffered a broken arm in the last weekend of the regular season.

Even before winning another cup, these have easily been the most remarkable back-to-back seasons in Komets history just because they were so different.

“When our team was decimated with injuries, a lot of people wrote us off, but we knew if we could get everybody healthy and come back that we would be a force to be reckoned with and we are,” David Franke said. “We want to keep this going. I'm not happy with two, I want another one. Let's do a three-peat.”

Wouldn't that be something to talk about?