How Great is Nate?

Well in one sense he is greater then "The Great One". Just a few months after being drafted first overall, Nathan MacKinnon collected 2 assists in his first ever National Hockey League game with the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs would go on to win 6-1 against the Anaheim Ducks in that opening game of their 2013-14 NHL season. With those 2 helpers, Nathan became the youngest player since 1944 to record two or more points in a game. (source)

10 days later in the nation's capital, MacKinnon scored on the left side of Michal Neuvirth to get his first professional goal. It was one of five goals that the Avs scored that night against the Washington Capitals in a 5-1 win, also Colorado's 5th striaght win.

Now 6 months later, Nathan has broken Wayne Gretzky's record of longest point streak by an 18 year old when MacKinnon assisted on the overtime winner in last night's 3-2 OT win versus the Detroit Red Wings. It was the thirteenth straight game that #29 had collected at least a point in the Avalanche uniform. Mr. Gretzky had recorded at least a point in 12 straight games back when he was 18 in the 1979-80 NHL season playing with the Edmonton Oilers. During the streak, Nate scored 5 goals and helped on 13 others for 18 points, a 1.38 points per game average.

Congratulations Nathan. Keep doing an awesome job in the NHL and I hope you get the Calder Trophy you deserve it.

GAMEDAY 64: vs Charlottetown

IT'S GAMEDAY

HALIFAX MOOSEHEADS vs. CHARLOTTETWON ISLANDERS 

Puck drops at 7:00pm

Metro Centre (10,595) ~ Halifax, NS

PREVIEW - What is tonight going to bring? Your Halifax Mooseheads are on a roll and are one of the hottest teams right now. Despite winning all three games this past week, the Moose find themselves still in the honorable mentions in the BMO chl top 10 rankings last night. Halifax has already clinched the division title for the second straight season. Nikolaj Ehlers will try to make history tonight and continue his point streak as will JONATHAN Drouin. Ehlers had hat tricks in each of the games this past week with the first two being natural hattie's. He also collected an assist in each of those 2 games. He comes into tonight's game on a 8 game point streak. Jonathan takes a 4 goal 9 game point streak into tonight's tilt versus the Islanders. 

Charlottetown on the other hand is battling for their lives trying to stay in the hunt for one of the last 3 playoff spots. They're doing a good job of late, collecting at least a point in their last three games. The last 2 games were against a team they are trying to push down the leaderboard, the Acadie-Bathurst Titan. The Oslanders will have to dig deep to defeat the home team tonight and not relay on a couple of their rookies who are leading the charge.


These two teams met on February 19 at the Metro Centre with the home team scoring 3 goals in the first period on route to a 5-1 victory. Nikolaj Ehlers had yet another 2 goal game and added 2 assists for a four point night to help the home team win.

THE NUMBERS

Leading scorers
CHA: Daniel Sprong 59pts (25G & 34A), Alexandre Goulet 43pts (25G & 18A), Kameron Kielly 30pts (10G & 20A)
HAL: Jonathan Drouin 95pts (25G & 70A), Nikolaj Ehlers 94pts (46G & 48A), Darcy Ashley 72pts (26G & 46A)

LAST GAMES
Halifax visited provincial rivals Cape Breton on Tuesday and scored 5 goals in each of the first 2 period en route to a 10-1 beating of the Screaming Eagles. Nikolaj Ehlers scored his third straight hat trick and Jonathan Drouin had 6 points  while Zach Fucale made 30 saves for the almost shutout.

Charlottetown is coming off a win against the Acadie-Bathurst Titan at home, coming from behind to win 3-1. Daniel Sprong and Kameron Kielly scored a goal each to add to their point totals and Mason McDonald stopped 23 shots for the victory.

HEAD-TO-HEAD
This season       6-1-0-0     29GF      15GA
September 13   Mooseheads 2 at Islanders 5
October 23   Islanders 2 at Mooseheads 4
November 15   Mooseheads 4 at Islanders 3
December 8  Mooseheads 4 at Islanders 1
January 3   Islanders at Mooseheads POSTPONED
January 8   Mooseheads 5 at Islanders 2
January 15  Islanders 1 at Mooseheads 5
February 19  Islanders 1 at Mooseheads 5
March 6 @ 7pm Islanders at Mooseheads
March 11 @ 7pm Mooseheads at Islanders
Last season   7-1-0-0   43GF   20GA

GAME COVERAGE
Live: @MC_MooseCountry, @islandersgmday
TV: None
Radio: News 95.7
Webcast: TELUS
Post-game: The Chronicle Herald

AFTER THE GAME
Halifax will travel to Saint John to take on the Sea Dogs at Harbour Station at 7pm. Join me for live in game tweeting as I will be joining the Mooster Club on this road trip.

BREAKING: Live Tweet in SJ

I know people are getting ready for the big tilt against the Moncton Wildcats but I wanted to mention something.

One week from today I will be live tweeting a road game!! 

Finally after joining the Mooster Club at the beginning of the season and getting emails upon emails of road trips that they were having, I am able to say I can join them for the last one of the 2013-14 season. Can you believe it's already March? We're getting down to the intensity of the season as teams fight for playoff positions. See my previous post for that story. 

As you all know I try my hardest to bring you in game live tweets from the Mooseheads home games as much as I can. Well now I can bring you tweets from a road game. On March 8 I will be hopping on a bus with a bunch of other Club members and travelling to Saint John as our boys take on the Sea Dogs. 

So follow me on Twitter at @MC_MooseCountry and check the Facebook page during the game for updates. 

Go Moose Go!! 

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.