Halifax Mooseheads
| Halifax Mooseheads | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| City | Halifax, Nova Scotia |
| League | Quebec Major Junior Hockey League |
| Division | Maritimes Division |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Home arena | Scotiabank Centre |
| Colours | Green, White, Red |
| General manager | Cam Russell |
| Head coach | Andre Tourigny |
| Championships | 2013 MasterCard Memorial Cup Champions |
| Website | www.halifaxmooseheads.ca |
The Halifax Mooseheads are a Canadian major junior ice hockey club in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The team was founded in 1994 and began play in the Dilio Division of the QMJHL from the 1994–95 season. They have appeared in the President's Cup Finals three times, winning in 2013. The other two appearances were in 2003 and 2005. They hosted the Memorial Cup tournament in 2000, and won the Memorial Cup in 2013. The team plays their home games in the Scotiabank Centre with a capacity of 10,595 seats.
The team was first envisioned by Moosehead Brewery Vice President of Sales and Marketing Harold MacKay in 1993, who believed that Halifax could host a QMJHL team. The QMJHL had teams exclusively located in the Province of Quebec, so adding a team in the Maritimes would add to travel costs for the other teams. MacKay was confident that the Halifax franchise could be successful and received financial backing from Moosehead Breweries President and CEO Derek Oland. After careful negotiations by MacKay, the QMJHL expanded to the city of Halifax for the 1994–95 season. In their first year, in 1994, the Mooseheads finished in sixth place and lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Beauport Harfangs, taking the first-placed team to seven games. The Mooseheads and MacKay are considered pioneers for the QMJHL; following the success of the Mooseheads, the League began accepting franchises through relocation or expansion into Atlantic Canada, which lost most of its American Hockey League (AHL) franchises in the mid-1990s. The QMJHL has franchises in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Moncton, New Brunswick, Bathurst, New Brunswick, Saint John, New Brunswick and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (the Bathurst, Charlottetown and Sydney franchises were relocations from Quebec). While the League has had success with most of its Atlantic franchises, only the St. John's Fog Devils failed to garner the interest and following and moved to Verdun, Quebec, after the 2007–08 season, which was only their third season in existence. In 2013, the Mooseheads won the President's Cup as champions of the QMJHL. The Mooseheads then went on to compete in the Memorial Cup final in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where they faced and defeated the Portland Winterhawks on May 26, 2013 by a score of 6–4, with Nathan MacKinnon recording a hat-trick into an empty net with only 22 seconds left in the game. They made history at the 2016 QMJHL Draft by being the first ever team to have the 1st and 2nd overall picks where they selected highly touted prospects Benoit-Olivier Groulx and Truro's Jared McIsaac.
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