Sea Dogs Notebook

St John NB - beautiful in the sunlit snow. Taken from the International Space Station, 2 Jan 13 twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) January 3, 2013

TOMORROW

The Sea Dogs are back in action tomorrow night when they travel to Halifax to take on Mooseheads. Halifax, 32-3-1-1, is the top-ranked team in the Canadian Hockey League despite being without Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin, and Martin Frk for the past few weeks.

The Mooseheads are averaging 8,328 fans per game this season and tomorrow night is Teddy Bear Toss Night. So, there is sure to be a big delay in the game at some point.

Halifax beat the Moncton Wildcats 7-3 tonight at the Metro Centre.

SATURDAY

The Sea Dogs next home game is this Saturday at Harbour Station against the PEI Rocket. Game time is 7pm.

Saint John is 1-2-0-0 against the Rocket this season while PEI is 2-0-1-0 against Saint John.

DEADLINE

The league’s trade deadline is on Tuesday at 1pm Atlantic time. Given the way NHL talks are going, it doesn’t sound like anything will be certain there by deadline day which makes trading Jonathan Huberdeau quite complicated.

TVA Sports reports that the QMJHL will not push back the trade deadline to accommodate a Huberdeau deal. The OHL is reportedly considering pushing back their deadline due to the NHL’s silliness.

It’s been pretty quiet on the Huberdeau front. Surely things will heat up once the world juniors come to an end on Saturday.

DONAGHEY

According to a bunch of people on Twitter, the Sea Dogs have called up forward Connor Donaghey from the Maritime Junior Hockey League’s Yarmouth Mariners.

"Best of luck to Connor,” Mariners head coach and general manager Laurie Barron told CJLS. “That's part of what we do, trying to get kids to the next level. If he sticks with Saint John we wish him nothing but the best, but if he comes back we'll welcome him with open arms on the 8th."

Donaghey has nine goals and 20 assists in 29 games with the Mariners. The 18-year old had a goal and an assist in two pre-season games with the Sea Dogs. He played AAA hockey in St. John’s last year.

He’ll join fellow Newfoundlanders Marcus Cuomo and Michael Abbott in Saint John’s lineup.

DRAFT

Because the league website doesn’t do it, a fan over on the French message boards has been doing some great work by keeping track of team’s draft picks. Here’s what the Sea Dogs currently have for the 2013 draft:

1-1(RIM)-2-3-4-6(RIM)-7-8-8(GAT)-9-10-11-12-13-14-EURO1-EURO2

Just in case you were wondering.

TEAM QUEBEC

The great Peter Loubardias on players to watch on Team Quebec at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge. Sea Dogs defenseman Olivier LeBlanc is one of them.