March Is Just The Beginning

As we end the month of February let's take a look at the coming month and the race to the playoffs. It's going to be a very intense interesting final 15 days for half of the Maritime division plus 3 Quebec teams and their fans. After tonight's games the bottom 5 teams are separated by only 4 points and are battling for the final 3 playoff spots. The Chicoutimi Sagueneens have not officially clinched a playoff spot but with them and the Sherbrooke Phoenix, who are 15th overall, each having 7 games left the Sags have basically sown it up.

Your Halifax Mooseheads have clinched a chance to repeat as league champions but possibly as third overall this year. The Moose lead the Maritime division by 13 points over provincials rivals Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. The Eagles finished last overall last season but have been quite good this season and are looking to make a run and show that the Saint John Sea Dogs and Mooseheads are not the only Atlantic Canada team that can win championships in the last few years. If Halifax can extend their win streak to seven tomorrow night they will clinch the division title. The Moncton Wildcats are the other Maritime team to have clinched a playoff spot.

After Chicoutimi with 53 points, it`s the Charlottetown Islanders in 14th overall with a record of 19-36-2-4 with 44 points. The Acadie-Bathurst Titan (18-37-4-2) are next at 15th overall two points behind the Islanders and tied with the Shawinigan Cataractes who are 17-36-4-4. Saint John and Sherbrooke are right now in the position to miss the playoffs.

All 6 Maritime teams play each other in the month of March. Halifax plays Cape Breton, Charlottetown and Saint John twice each plus the Wildcats tomorrow.

Good luck to everyone the rest of the season. Here are the standings

as of 11:45pm Friday February 28

GAMEDAY 61: at Acadie-Bathurst

IT'S GAMEDAY

ACADIE-BATHURST TITAN vs. HALIFAX MOOSEHEADS

Puck drop at 7:00pm

K.C Irving Regional Centre (3,162) ~ Bathurst, NB

PREVIEW - Can we go for 6? After a slow start to start February, your Halifax Mooseheads are heating up at the right time yet again. When they take on the Acadie-Bathurst Titan tonight they will be looking for their 6th straight win while the Titan are fighting for their lives trying to make the playoffs. With almost every team having 8 games left on their schedule going into tonight, these two teams are heading in different directions. The Mooseheads are once again 2 points behind second overall Blainville. Three points seperate the bottom 5 teams in the standings with Bathurst being on top of that board.

This is the second visit to the K.C. for Halifax in two weeks. The two clubs met each other on February 16 with the home Titan being shutout 6-0. Philippe Gadoury scored two goals while Zach Fucale made 17 saves. Jacob Brennan and Miguel Sullivan shared the netminding roles stopping 31 of 37 pucks.

THE NUMBERS

Leading scorers
HAL: Jonathan Doruin 84pts (24G & 60A), Nikolaj Ehlers 83pts (37G & 46A), Darcy Ashley 69pts (25G & 44A)
BAT: Matthew Boudreau 38pts (14G & 24A), Scott Oke 35pts (15G & 20A), Alexandros Soumakis 30pts (16G & 14A)

HEAD-TO-HEAD
This season    5-0-0-0    29GF   13GA
September 25 Titan 3 at Mooseheads 5
October 25 Mooseheads 5 at Titan 2
October 26 Titan 3 at Mooseheads 4
November 16 Mooseheads 6 at Titan 3
November 22 Titan 2 at Mooseheads 9
January 11  Titan 2 at Mooseheads 4
January 19  Mooseheads 9 at Titan 1
February 16  Mooseheads 6 at Titan 0
February 28 @ 7pm Mooseheads at Titan
Last season      6-0-2-0    50GF    35GA

GAME COVERAGE
TV: None
Live: @ABTitanLive, @CoolenTQN
Radio: News 95.7, CKLE 92.9
Webcast: TELUS
Post-game: The Q News

AFTER THE GAME
Halifax will travel to Moncton to take on the Wildcats on Saturday night. Puck drops at 7pm.

Herd Word

#TOMSTRONG
Stephen Gillard, Stephen MacAulay and the Saint Mary's Huskies will be playing an important game tonight in support of their assistant coach Tom Lee. The Huskies will take on the No. 4 nationally ranked Acadia Axemen at the Forum this evening. Puck will drop at 7pm. TomStrong has become a big thing around the city and it is to help raise money for the Luekemia and Lyphoma Society of Canada. I think this is a very good thing for the school to do. Go out and cheer on the former Mooseheads and support Tom as he battles cancer. I'll be tweeting some during the game.

MACKINNON
Nathan MacKinnon scored the only goal in last night's Colorado Avalanche's 3-1 loss the Philadelphia Flyers. The goal was his 21st of the season. It also extended his point streak to 7 games. Nathan is just ripping it up in the NHL as a rookie this year. We shouldn't really be surprised though. He now has 43 points in 57 games played and is still first among rookies, 7 points ahead of the next rookie.

SOLDOUT
Saturday night hockey and soldout are four words that should go together. Well it's taken 4 and a half months but they can finally go together when talking about a Halifax Mooseheads game. On Wednesday, the Moose announced that tomorrow night's game against the Rimouski Oceanic is soldout. That means there will be 10,595 roaring fans cheering on the home team as they take on one of our biggest rivals. Follow me on twitter during the game though I may be too excited to live tweet.

FUCALE
We may not be top of the league this season but that doesn't mean that our popularity has dimmed down. In a new 'award' that the QMJHL started this year at the end of November, a Halifax Mooseheads player has been named the Social Media Star of the month each time. The award is given to a player who has the most mentions on the two social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook. For twitter it's favourites, retweets or direct mentions for a player while on Facebook it's comments or likes about a player. For the month of January it has been given to Zach Fucale, your team goalie. According to the article, Zach had a total of 750 mentions on Twitter and 2000 comments and likes on Facebook. He was followed by two other Mooseheads; Jonathan Drouin (who won in November) and Nikolaj Ehlers.


BLACK & GOLD BUS ATTACK
This has nothing to do with the Mooseheads but I thought it was a nice showing of how well the Charlottetown Islanders are doing now in terms of fan support. One of the biggest Islander fans is HKYHatGuy. He is know for his cowboy hat with a Canadian flag on the front and his crazy cheering. Well he decided to go on another trip across the bridge to Moncton and bring a long some friends this time to cheer on the Islanders away from the Civic Centre. It will be a full bus heading to Moncton this afternoon when another game in the Battle of the Bridge goes tonight at 7pm.

Good job HKYHatGuy and the rest of the Charlottetown fan base. Follow @HKYHatGuy on twitter.

Last Quebec trip intense

The Halifax Mooseheads have played their last Quebec road trip of the season this past weekend. On Wednesday the Herd traveled to the province of Quebec to start their road trip. They first made a stop in Quebec City to take on the Remparts on Thursday night. It was a very penalized affair as the Remparts took the game 8-2 on the strength of their powerplay. Jonathan Drouin and Nikolaj Ehlers were both thrown out of the game in the third period while Andrew Ryan was also sent to the dressing room with only a few minutes left. Now games between these two teams have always been interesting and physical but this took it to another level. According to the Mooseheads twitter account they didn't know why Drouin, Ehlers and Ryan got kicked out. Quebec had 16 powerplays with penalty of them being 5 on 3's. There was almost 100 penalty minutes during the game with 63 of them being from Halifax while 34 were given to Quebec. Nick Sorenson had a hat trick for the Remparts while Halifax goals came from Ehlers and Andrew Shewfelt.

On Friday the team went north to take on the Cataractes in Shawinigan. They had a much better game against the Cataractes winning 4-3. Halifax was down 2-0 after 30:12 of the game. With the help of Drouin and Ehlers, the Moose came storming back to score 4 goals. Brent Andrews scored the game winner into the empty net. Nicolas Walsh scored with 2 seconds left to make it interesting but it was too late for Shawinigan.

Last night was the last game of the road trip as the Moose traveled to Boisbriand to battle the Armada. The game went to a shootout which Halifax was unable to pull through as the Armada won 4 to 3. Marcus Hinds scored the winner in the eighth round, Darcy Ashley was the only one able to score for Halifax. All 3 of Halifax's goal were scored on the powerplay that was held scoreless in the previous two games.

Halifax will now play 3 more games against Quebec teams all being this month and all at home. Rimouski comes to town on Saturday which is also the Mooseheads next game. On February 13 we welcome the Gatineau Olympiques to Moose Country and in the last home game of February it's a rematch against the Cataractes on the 21st.

As always GO MOOSE GO!! Have a great week and see ya Saturday.