QMJHL Playoffs Coming To Fredericton

FREDERICTON – In a bizarre turn of events, there will be a QMJHL playoff game played in Fredericton on Friday night.

With a 4-3 win over the Halifax Mooseheads tonight at Scotiabank Centre, the Moncton Wildcats have forced a game five in the best-of-seven quarterfinal series. It was determined today that, due to a scheduling conflict at the Moncton Coliseum, game five will be played at the Aitken Centre.

CBC New Brunswick has all the details. Basically the arena is double booked for Friday.

Some thought on this…

1. I’m no expert on municipal event booking, but maybe the City of Moncton shouldn’t have booked an event for a Friday night in April? Seems like a bad idea – and one that, from what I can tell, goes against the agreement the City and the Wildcats signed.

2. The Wildcats seemingly knew about this event but scheduled a game for Friday night anyways. Maybe they thought the car show thing could change their schedule or something? And why is this being dealt with now and not when the series schedule was being created last week?

3. A new arena in Moncton could just move all these scheduling problems from the Coliseum to the new rink. Pretty much have to keep the Coliseum open in some capacity.

4. Looking forward to the day Irving gets fed up with all this and builds his own rink out by the Salisbury Big Stop or something.

5. On the bright side, a QMJHL playoff game at the Aitken Centre will be interesting. There are plenty of Wildcats fans in the city. Hopefully the atmosphere is good. 

Ticket details will be released soon.

Elsewhere tonight, Quebec grabbed a 3-0 series lead with a 5-2 win over the Charlottetown Islanders.