Meloche/Courchesne tandem expected

Michael Hawkins/Saint John Sea Dogs

HALIFAX - For many years, the Saint John Sea Dogs have had question marks around their goaltending situation at this point in the off-season.

This year, that does not appear to be the case.

Sea Dogs president and general manager Trevor Georgie confirmed following Saturday's QMJHL Entry Draft that Samuel Meloche and Rafaël Courchesne are expected to be the team's goaltending tandem to start the 2026-27 season.

The Sea Dogs acquired Meloche, a Buffalo Sabres prospect, from the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies last week. Meloche, who will turn 19 next month, has played over 50 games in each of the past two seasons. He'll certainly be looked upon to carry the majority of the load with Courchesne as his backup.

Courchesne, who will turn 18 in August, went 12-19-2 with a 3.92 goals against average and a .880 save percentage in 38 games with Saint John last year, his first QMJHL season. Georgie said he expects the netminder to have better results this season with a stronger defensive team in front of him.

"Courchesne will be back. That's our plan," said Georgie.

"We believe in Raf big time. He had a really good season for us facing a lot of really high danger shots."

When asked about what this all means for 17-year-old Jase MacPherson – who was a second-round pick of the Sea Dogs in last year's QMJHL Entry Draft – Georgie said the team doesn't want to rush him into the QMJHL. There's always the chance a strong training camp makes things interesting, of course.

"For us the priority is whatever he's most ready for. Perhaps in camp he comes in and he beats one of the other two guys out. We certainly want to keep him in the organization. We believe in him and he's the goalie of the future for us. But we also don't want to rush him into something because that wouldn't be helping."

MacPherson spent last season with the under-18 Kensington Wild, helping the club win a provincial championship. He appeared in one game with the Sea Dogs – which came against Jim Hulton's Charlottetown Islanders squad.

Saint John currently has seven goalies on their protected list: Meloche, Courchesne, MacPherson, Samuel Doyon-Cataquiz, Sam Pitcher, Philippe Harvey and Will Torres. The Sea Dogs traded Montreal Canadiens prospect Arseni Radkov to the Val-d'Or Foreurs this weekend where he'll get much more playing time.

The Sea Dogs drafted two goaltenders on the weekend: Torres in the seventh-round and Harvey in the ninth-round.

"We really like Torres," said Sea Dogs director of scouting Nick Lepore. "We had him much higher than that on our list. Harvey was there and we had him much higher than that. Harvey's also a late birthday. He can play, he can take his time and develop and play AAA for another two seasons. So there are two goalies that we really like, and I think you can never have enough goalies. Sometimes teams are really stuck and they're looking for goalies, and it's never a bad thing to have one or two extras that can either play with us or maybe be involved in a trade down the line."