Mariners fans still set MHL attendance standards in Yarmouth
Faithful fans remain the order of the day for Hockey Night in Yarmouth.
Residents of southwestern Nova Scotia fishing communities can’t catch enough of their beloved Yarmouth Mariners in the Maritime Junior Hockey League.
Season after season, junior A hockey fans from across the region pack the Mariners Centre on game nights. Yarmouth crowds consistently hit the 1,200-or-higher range in the regular season and reach 1,501-crowd capacity in the playoffs, as they did last spring when the Mariners won the MHL championship.
“We’ve been pretty lucky,” says Mariners head coach and general manager Laurie Barron, who has been part of the organization in various capacities for most of its 18-season existence. “I was here the first year, 2002, and (attendance) has been good right through. One thing that has been constant is the fans.
“(Mariners Centre) is a bit of a meeting place and it’s a good atmosphere. And a crowd brings a crowd. I think sometimes we get a little bit of the Chicago Blackhawk type thing where not only do our players like playing here, but everybody enjoys coming to Yarmouth, just in the fact that the place is always buzzing.”
Although they generally ice a competitive team, the Mariners know that winning a championship in the 12-team MHL doesn’t come without heavy lifting.
“This is a tough league to win in,” Barron says. “We were lucky enough to win last year, and I was looking at the trophy and the last team that won back to back was the 1993-94 (Antigonish) Bulldogs.
“Everybody likes a winner, but I think the biggest thing down here, almost like the type of people they are in the region, if you work hard and do your best, they can live with that," he says. "We take a lot of pride in the product. Especially the last four years, we’ve had a good showing and a good team.”
The Mariners benefit from being the prime ticket in a wide catchment area stretching from Shelburne to Clare.
“I do a lot of work with minor hockey, and anytime that you go down and help in Clare, Barrington or Shelburne, that area, it’s amazing how many people are wearing Mariner hats and clothing and so on,” says Barron. “It’s a strong presence, not just in Yarmouth, but the whole region.
“Our fans don’t just go to (games in) Yarmouth, either. If you’re at a game in Bridgewater or the (Annapolis) Valley or even Truro, you’ll see we’ve got a good following, even on the road.”
At home this season, the Mariners posted a 7-3 record through mid-November, averaging 1,194 fans per game. With a 12-7-2-1 record overall as of Nov. 20, sitting in second place in the Eastlink South Division standings behind the South Shore Lumberjacks (155-0-1).
Yarmouth continues to lead attendance numbers among six Eastlink South Division (Nova Scotia) teams. Each of those other five franchises averaged under 800 fans per home game during the first two months of the season: the Pictou County Weeks Crushers (781), Truro Bearcats (731), Amherst Ramblers (648), South Shore (619), and Valley Wildcats (331).
With the exception of Amherst, all of the Nova Scotia teams play in modern rinks or multi-purpose centres built in the past 20 years.
Amherst Stadium is from an earlier era, but it was renovated and upgraded before the Ramblers hosted the Fred Page Cup Eastern Canadian championship last May.
NEWER BUILDINGS
“The league has really picked up,” says Barron, crediting greater marketing and newer buildings for that progression.
“There’s no rinks now that we go to that are older, colder buildings where when the weather gets bad, you go there and you’re freezing. You look around the league and see beautiful facilities. I think that’s certainly helped. It’s a lot more comfortable, especially on a cold evening, knowing that you’re going to go to a rink where, well, you’re not going to freeze your ass off.”
As fans warm up to the Mariners, the organization reaps success on and off the ice. Junior A hockey is an exclusive market in Yarmouth, where there isn’t competition from major junior or university teams.
“I think it’s really important to be the big show in town,” Barron says. “We’re so involved with minor hockey and in the community that the kids identify with (the players). We like to think that kids that are playing minor hockey in Yarmouth, they aspire to be Mariners. We’ve seen that over the years. We’ve had a lot of territorial (draft) picks from the area.
“The people from down here, they give us a lot of respect, and we try to give as much back as we can.”
ELSEWHERE IN THE LEAGUE
While the long-running success of the Yarmouth Mariners is at the forefront of MHL box-office achievement in Nova Scotia, the league’s six-team North Division (New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) markets are riding a wave of their own.
Junior A hockey is gaining ground in a big way in New Brunswick, while the lone P.E.I. franchise – the Summerside Western Capitals – continues a long tradition of stability on and off the ice.
Five teams from the North Division were among the top six markets in MHL attendance through mid-November this season, joining Yarmouth from the South Division in the upper half of crowd counts across the board.
The hottest franchise at the gate is the Edmundston Blizzard, a marketing sensation since joining the MHL in 2017. The northwestern New Brunswick city of 16,500 residents has attracted sellout crowds of 2,800 to the Jean Daigle Centre in numbers that not only lead the MHL, but also trump some Quebec Major Junior Hockey League markets.
“It’s run like a major junior organization,” says Edmundston general manager Steve Macpherson. “They did a stat last year where we would have been, I believe, ninth in the Quebec major junior (league) in attendance, out of the 18 teams in the Q.
“We have a lot of amazing volunteers and (dedicated) people who run the hockey team, top to bottom. It’s been a great experience.”
It’s been a rags-to-riches story for the Blizzard, the former Dieppe Commandos franchise.
“I was the GM of the Dieppe Commandos for a couple of years before we went to Edmundston,” says the Moncton-based Macpherson. “We were consistently a good team, but only getting 100 to 150 fans (per game). Obviously, that doesn’t work out in the end.
“A group from Edmundston purchased our team and kept myself and our head scout on board. Once we moved into the brandnew rink, we ended up getting 2,200 to 2,300 fans (each) game. We became a really good team and by the end of the year, we were selling out every game. We won the league (championship) our first year. Last year, we sold out every game, and this year we’re selling out every game, 2,800 people.”
The Blizzard averaged 2,649 fans per home game in the opening two months of this MHL season, posting a 6-2-0-1 record at home and a 13-6-0-1 record overall by mid-November.
The Eastlink North Division frontrunner Summerside Capitals were a perfect 10-0 at home in the first part of the season, averaging 1,297 fans per game to rank second in MHL attendance.
Three other North teams also topped the 1,000-fan average through Nov. 17 action: the Campbellton Tigers (1,202), Fredericton Red Wings (1,089) and Grand Falls Rapids (1,012).
Fredericton is the newest member of the MHL. Playing out of the Grant-Harvey Centre, the former St. Stephen Aces are off to a respectable start in the provincial capital, where the University of New Brunswick Reds have long dominated the hockey market.
The Miramichi Timberwolves (706 fans per game) were at the bottom of North Division attendance and ninth overall in the MHL.
In the hockey hotbed of Edmundston, the Blizzard have carved an identity that the Commandos couldn’t seem to establish playing in the Moncton-Dieppe region.
“I just think there’s so much hockey going on in Moncton, with the (major junior) Wildcats, junior B, high school, midget AAA and university,” Macpherson says. “There’s a whole bunch of different levels of hockey. There wasn’t a lot of time to find to go watch junior A games (in Moncton or Dieppe). It was unfortunate.”
The franchise’s fortunes are now the talk of the town and the greater MHL landscape.