Since the time this has been discussed, it is now possible to confirm it: give or take a few commas, QMJHL hockey will return to St. John’s, Newfoundland, in time for the 2025-2026 season.
According to several sources familiar with the matter, a group of three businessmen from the Newfoundland capital will announce within a few days or at the beginning of 2025 that they have acquired the Acadie-Bathurst Titan in order to move the The junior team at Mary Brown’s Center, a 7,000-seat amphitheater formerly known as Mile One Stadium.
The training operator will be Glenn Stanford, a long-time player involved in hockey in St. John’s. In 2005, he and his group bit the dust to obtain the first concession granted by the QMJHL in this corner of the country.
We do not know the exact amount of the transaction, but it is believed that it will be more than $5.5 million.
The Fog Devils called St. John’s home in the QMJHL from 2005 to 2008, but a significantly disadvantageous rental contract for the amphitheater got the better of the owners at the time (the Dobbin family) after only three years of operation. . The team was sold to Montrealer Farrell Miller, who moved it to Verdun. This time, we believe that the situation will be significantly better in the easternmost province of the country.
As for the current owners of the Titan, it is common knowledge that they have been sinking thousands of dollars in deficits for years. We tried by all means to sell the dealership to investors from Bathurst, but no one raised their hand to try to save the dealership and keep it in the heat region. The QMJHL and the Titan even mandated an external firm to help with the sales process last January, but nothing worked out.
The city of Bathurst had also promised to support the team and its owners in November 2021, but the effort was not enough. Even though rumors have circulated several times in Bathurst about the future of the Titan, this time it is over for this team which moved from Laval to northern New Brunswick in 1998.
Coming back to the new ownership group in St. John’s, we can assume that it will have to cover the travel costs of the teams who will travel to the island of Newfoundland and Labrador as was the case with the defunct Fog Devils between 2005 and 2008.
Already, draft calendars for the 2025-2026 season are in preparation. Basically, the 12 teams based in Quebec would travel to Newfoundland once every two years to play two matches. The five other teams from the Maritimes section will travel to Newfoundland twice to play doubleheaders for a total of 32 local games.
Currently, Quebec teams travel by bus twice per season to the Maritimes for three-game trips. Let’s take the example of a team like the Voltigeurs de Drummondville. They would make a trip to the Maritimes according to the same principle as now: (Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick and Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island) and for their second trip, they would go to Halifax for one game and would then fly from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland for two games.
It remains to be finalized, but basically the Quebec teams would save a long trip there or back by bus from the Maritimes.
The Newfoundland team would go on the road between 8 and 10 times per season to play sequences of 3 or 4 games abroad.
One of the sticking points in recent years regarding the possible return of a QMJHL team to Newfoundland was the provincial legislation regarding the recognition of junior players as student-athletes and not employees subject to the minimum wage. .
The provincial government agreed last month to modify its law on labor standards to bring it into line with those of the other provinces involved in the Maritimes-Québec Junior Hockey League.
The future Newfoundland owners hope to formalize the purchase of the Titan in January, in order to launch the sale of season tickets and announce the possible name and colors of the new team.
Newfoundland was home to the St. John’s Maple Leafs of the American League from 1991 to 2005. There were the Fog Devils of the QMJHL for 3 years (2005-2008), then the Newfoundland Ice Caps, ( school club of the Canadiens) for two years (2015-2017), and finally, more recently, the Growlers in the ECHL for 5 years.
The Acadie-Bathurst Titan has had great seasons at the KC Irving Center since 1998, including two conquests of the President Cup and especially the conquest of the 100th Memorial Cup in history in 2017-2018. But attendances, which were always above 3,000 spectators in the early 2000s, continued to decline, dropping to 1,627 spectators per game last year in what is considered one of the smallest markets in the Canadian Hockey League. hockey.
The aftermath of COVID also hurt financially the owners of the Titan who fought body and soul to make it work. The 2024-2025 season sounds the death knell for the Titan in Bathurst, which is obviously extremely sad for hockey fans in this part of the country.
Another factor that will help the future Newfoundland team take off next year is that, unlike 2005, we will not be talking about an expansion team starting from scratch, but rather a team that will rely on a solid core of players and good draft picks next June.
This will be the first franchise movement in the QMJHL since the 2011-2012 season, when the Montreal Junior moved to Boisbriand to become the Armada and the Lewiston MAINEiacs were dissolved.
