WORLD U17
Halifax Mooseheads associate coach Brad MacKenzie assisted Canada White to a gold medal at the 2024 World U17 Hockey Challenge earlier this month in Sarnia. In the six team tournament, Canada White defeated Czechia and lost to Sweden in overtime during the preliminary round. It was an all Canada championship match. Congrats to Brad and the rest of Canada White on becoming the U17 champions.
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| Photo - Hockey Canada website |
NCAA RULE CHANGE
In a big move, the NCAA voted a couple weeks ago that players who have skated for any of the CHL teams will be allowed to play collegiate hockey in the USA effective August 1, 2025. Previously, CHL players had been considered professionals and barred because of the NCAA's amateurism rules, in part because some CHL have signed NHL entry-level contracts according to the NHL website. While it'll probably increase the pool of talented American players (or Canadians wanting to play college hockey in the States) for the QMJHL, OHL and WHL, it sounds like it could be detrimental to other junior leagues in the country. Universities in Canada will likely feel the affect of this rule change as well. One example of this already is star goaltender for the Moncton Wildcats, Jacob Steinman announced his commitment to play for the Bowling Green Falcons in 2024-25.
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| Photo - Predators X |
Former Herd forward Zachary L'Heureux made his NHL debut on October 22 and has been able to stay up in top league ever since with the Nashville Predators. The 21-year-old scored his first NHL goal on Monday. L'Heureux, a native of Montreal, QC, has an additional three assists for a total of 4 points in 15 games played. Congrats to Zach.
ATTENDANCE
Despite being in a rebuild year, fans in Moose Country are still showing up - at least according to official numbers. The average attendance so far this season of 7,815 is fourth most in team history through the first 10 games. The top three seasons are 2012-13 (8,270) when the team was projected to win the President's Cup, 2018-19 (8,131) and 1999-00 (8,078). Both of the latter seasons were years that the Mooseheads were Memorial Cup hosts. In the summer, the club announced that season ticket holder seats were sold out so that is great considering the Mooseheads didn't have the hype that those other teams did. Whether it's the new arena features and added in-game experiences or the fact that the lineup on the ice has been competitive most games or the fact that half of the matches have been against Quebec teams, nice to see the fans continuing to support the team.
MOOSE TRACKS
Episode 3 of Moose Tracks is up on YouTube now but you can watch below. I guess I never shared the first two but you can watch Episode 1 and Episode 2 on the team's channel as well. I believe they only did four episodes last season, so hopefully since this is the third one already they will be doing more this season.
TREY LEWIS
Not sure if this was talked about in the above mentioned podcast but Willy Palov posted last week that a new biography about former captain Trey Lewis has hit bookstore shelves. The book is written in french and has been a project for New Brunswick native Bruno Richard since 2020. Richard said he conducted more than 50 interviews of Lewis's friends, former teammates and others who know him best according to the article.
If you know french and enjoy hockey biographies, keep a look out for the book titled Mon idole, Trey Lewis at a store near you.
NEW TEAM THINGS
Photo - Herd website
The club has announced a few new adventures this month and it began with the unveiling of a new bus. It features individual leather captain's chairs along with a new window layout and redesigned interior lighting which will provide a better passenger experience on their long road trips. Halifax also opened up a new physical team store that is at Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth. Fans can get everything that has been sold on the online shop the last few years but I think the store has a few small additional items. I checked it out today and they have some nice displays so check it out if you need to do some Christmas shopping. The store will be open during mall hours Monday-Friday.
Scott MacIntosh and former Herd player Brad Cuzner launched the new Mooseheads podcast on Wednesday as well. I'm not sure how often they will put out a new episode but the first one is up on the team's YouTube channel now. Mooseheads ultimate tough guy Trey Lewis was a guest for this week, discussing his career with Halifax and what he has been up to since he graduated junior hockey. Check it out here.
