memorial cup in rimouski 2009

[brendan_435]

So rimouski is hosting the memorial cup next year. I thought you needed a minimum 5000 seat rink to host it, but i could swear theirs was only 4300??
any insight, or am i just off my rocker?

[Kevy]

Rimouski? I'd give it to someone a little better. Maybe the Seadogs of Saint John.

Better rink, better team

[three dog night]

I heard their renovating the arena so the capicity might be a little higher for the cup although i think St.John should have got it to obigger arena and city but i heard the fans in Rimouski really support their team every game is standing room only.

[skatee]

the seadogs are moving.. so why st. johns?
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Memorial Cup announcement ThursdayThe QMJHL will reveal the host of the 2009 Memorial Cup at the board of governors meeting in Montreal on Thursday.
The five contending teams are Halifax, Lewiston, Chicoutimi, Rimouski and Shawinigan. St. John’s is no longer in the competition because the team will be moved to Verdun, Que., during the off-season.
"I have no idea who it will be," Mooseheads majority owner Bobby Smith said on Tuesday. "This has been a very tight-lipped, professionally run process and I don’t think (committee chairman) Bernard Lord would have signed up and brought in the co-committee members that he did so that somebody could leak it beforehand. We’ll all find out at the board of governors meeting on the third (of April).
"There will be five nervous guys in the room and, after the announcement, there will be one happy one and four disappointed ones."

[Kevy]

Closing Time

Titan eliminate Fog Devils from playoffs; existence


Adam Puddicombe
fogdevils.com

The St. John's Fog Devils gave the Acadie-Bathurst Titan all they could handle on Monday night but in the end it just wasn't enough as the Titan defeated the Fog Devils 4-3. With the win Acadie-Bathurst managed to defeat the persistent Fog Devils 4-2 in the series and eliminate the Fog Devils from the playoffs and send the team into the history books as the club is set to relocate to Verdun, PQ for the 2008-09 season. In a fitting turn of events, it was former Fog Devil and long-time fan favorite Ryan Graham who managed to score the winning goal in the game, ending the Fog Devils run. The game marked the end of a roller-coaster series that brought just about a bit of everything.

It was Mario Kempe who got the Fog Devils on the board first as he scored a weird goal just 58 seconds into the game from Jean-Simon Allard and Henrick Lavoie to give the Foggies a 1-0 lead. Thomas Svoboda would tie the game at the 6:34 mark to make it 1-1 and Brad Tesink would make it 2-1 for Bathurst before the end of the period. The Fog Devils managed to kill off several Titan power-play opportunities to keep the score at 2-1 after 20 minutes of play. The Titan outshot the Fog Devils 13-5 in the period.

Thomas Svoboda took an early penalty in the second and the Fog Devils wasted no time making him pay as Luke Adam banged home and pass from Jean-Simon Allard to make it 2-2. Alex Wall got the other assist on the goal coming at 2:04 of the second. Just over a minute later, Phil Mangan would give the Fog Devils a 3-2 lead as he rushed down the wing and snapped one past Nicolas Champion. Mangan's goal came unassisted. Not long after Mangan's goal, Pat O'Keefe would appear to put the Fog Devils up by two. The goal, however, was waved off as the linesman had called the Fog Devils for offsides. The call, one that didn't look to be offsides by any means, would prove to be a costly error for the Fog Devils. Minutes later, on a power-play of their own, the Titan would tie the game up once again. This time it was Drew Paris who found the back of the net on a slaphot to make it 3-3. Before the end of the period, Ryan Graham would score what would become the eventual game-winner as he found the back of the net for his fifth goal of the series. The Titan would hold a 4-3 lead heading into the second intermission while it was the Fog Devils who outshot the Titan 9-8 in the period.

The Titan would pressure the Fog Devils for much of the third period as Timo Pielmeier held his team in it making some key saves throughout the period. The Fog Devils persistence finally paid off as they were awarded a penalty late in the game. Unable to convert on the opporunity, the Fog Devils managed to take a penalty of their own with less than two minutes left in the game. The penalty proved costly as the Titan closed out the game and the series. Shots in the third were 17-6 for the Titan for a game total of 38-20 for the Titan. The three stars were: (1) Mathieu Perreault (2) Thomas Svoboda (3) Drew Paris.

With the loss, the St. John's Fog Devils franchise comes to a finale. These past three years, especially this playoff series with the Titan, has left Fog Devils fans with memories that they will not forget anytime soon. The players and coaching staff gave the city of St. John's one hell of a ride and the organization would like to wish the players the best in all of their future endeavours and would like to thank the fans for their endless support. On a personal note, I would like to thank the Dobbin family, specifically Brad and Derm, for the opportunity they have given me with the organization and thank the players, coaching staff, and management for three years I will never forget. Thanks to all. For one last time, Go Devils Go!

[Kevy]

Can this city keep a team? It's sad that they have such a great building to play out of, and one again they're left with no team.

[AlphaDog]

Really goes to show that "If you build it they will come" doesn't have meaning all the time. If there attendance figures were low, then the city had it coming to them. But if they supported the team and they STILL left, I really feel sorry for 'em.

[skatee]

found this interesting
from: http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/sports/article/256429#



What the Devil went wrong in St. John's?




By NEIL HODGE
Canadaeast News Service Published Wednesday April 2nd, 2008
Appeared on page B1
Brad Dobbin can't stop thinking about it.
The St. John's Fog Devils have been eliminated from the playoffs and with that comes the end of an era. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League is now dead in Newfoundland with the sale and transfer of the franchise to Montreal for next season. A pair of Fredericton hockey products, forward Taylor MacDougall and goaltender Jake Allen, will accompany them.
"The toughest thing is not being able to revisit the past," said Dobbin, the owner of the Fog Devils. "I often catch myself thinking 'Why didn't we do this? Why didn't we do that?' "The upshot is that even if you get all those things corrected we still had an uphill climb. One of the most frustrating aspects is the inability to put our thumb on exactly what the cause was that made things go wrong."
St. John's paid the $3 million fee for an expansion franchise and joined the QMJHL in 2005-06, along with the Saint John Sea Dogs. The Fog Devils began play the next season after the St. John's Maple Leafs of the American Hockey League folded.
Moncton, Saint John, Halifax, Sydney and Charlottetown all had a gap between the end of the AHL and their startup in the QMJHL.
"I wish we would've waited a year before playing our first season," said Dobbin. "I think fans in St. John's would've had a greater demand for hockey. The building would've realized what it's like to operate without an anchor tenant which frankly they still don't and won't until the middle of next year when they start to see the bills without the revenue coming in."
It's easy to figure out the equation that spelled doom for the QMJHL in St. John's. The Fog Devils had an unenviable lease at Mile One Centre, they were forced to pay travel costs for incoming teams and their average paid attendance this season was 2,500 per game.
Dobbin said the club needed to average almost 4,000 paid fans per game to make money under the current business plan. He added that ``anything over 3,500 paid certainly would've kept us in the game for the long term.'' The Fog Devils lost $100,000 in their first season and $750,000 in their second season. Dobbin is counting on a loss in the $1 million range this season.
"We budgeted on losing $250,000 for each of the first four years," he said. "That would give us four years to build the market, to go through one growing cycle in junior hockey and to weather some tough seasons. But, boy, nobody counted on losing $750,000 or more per year."
Dobbin beat out St. John's Sports and Entertainment, the city-appointed group that operates Mile One Centre, when they both presented bids for ownership of a QMJHL franchise. He then had to negotiate a building lease with that same body.
The Fog Devils paid $495,000 last year for use of the building. The breakdown was $10,000 per game night, $70,000 in box office fees, $45,000 in ice rental and in Dobbin's words ``some various other nickel and dime charges.''
Did St. John's Sports and Entertainment take it seriously the possibility that the franchise could be sold and transferred?
"I was very candid with them through the whole process," said Dobbin. "In early December, I told them that we received an offer to sell the team and that we needed to get something sorted out in the near future.
"I gave them some hard deadlines of January 15 and the end of January. Unfortunately, when we sat down with them they wanted to give us a two-hour presentation about how fair our lease was even though anybody who's even remotely involved knows it's the worst lease in Canada."
The Fog Devils inherited 1,100 season tickets from the AHL's Maple Leafs, but they lost 500 of them after the first season and were forced to reduce prices.
"Unfortunately, some fans weren't impressed with what they saw," said Dobbin. "The thing that's frustrating is it's an expansion franchise? What did they expect? There was a lot of negativity right off the bat due to a couple of things.
"Our ugly fight with the city getting started certainly didn't help. There was also an underlying layer of negativity from people with bad feeling towards the Leafs leaving, towards the building and towards hockey in general. The first year a lot of people just wrote us off as glorified high school, which I was shocked by."
Dobbin still believes a major junior franchise could be viable in St. John's, but only if there's a new mayor and new people running Mile One Centre who have a much different attitude.
He looked at operating the Fog Devils as a non-profit organization if they had stayed in the city. He wanted to cut the budget from $3 million to $2 million, make it a community team and be transparent with the books.
"It could work here with the right business plan," he said. "You would need the right airline partner, involvement from the province and a suitable arrangement with the city. You would need people working together to make it happen."

[AlphaDog]

Any team wanting to know how to make things work just need to call up our owners! They've done a great job! :)

Very sad about St. John's though. I feel worst for the hockey die hards in that area that have just watched team after team leave their island for somewhere on the mainland.

[Kevy]

Go to http://www.chl.ca/

There is a poll on "Who do you think will win the 2008 Mastercard Memorial Cup?"

The options are:

Kitchener Rangers
Tri City Americans
Halifax Mooseheads
Belleville Bulls
Other


The Bulls are leading with 68.28% of the votes, with the Rangers having 31.43%