There's a downtown pep rally today at noon at Moncton City Hall. The public is invited to come and soak up the festive atmosphere with the final countdown to the 2006 Memorial Cup.
The Quebec Remparts face the Peterborough Petes in the opener of the 10-day tournament tonight at 8 p.m. at the Royale Moncton Coliseum.
"Downtown Moncton Inc. is putting on this pep rally to kickoff the Memorial Cup," said Moncton Wildcats general manager Bill Schurman. "(Wildcats owner) Mr. (Robert) Irving will be there and the entire Wildcats team will be there.
"This will be our first public event since winning the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship last Sunday. It's an opportunity for the community to offer the Wildcats congratulations and to wish them good luck in the Memorial Cup.
"There's going to be entertainment at the pep rally, there's going to be food and it's free of charge. It should be a great time so hopefully we'll get a good turnout."
The Canadian Hockey League is releasing individual game tickets for the Memorial Cup. They will go on sale today from 10 a.m. until game time at the Coliseum box office.
There are approximately 300 tickets remaining for each game in the tournament. The Wildcats begin play against the Vancouver Giants tomorrow at 8 p.m.
There were 230 media accredited as of late yesterday afternoon. And the number was still growing.
Former Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Pat Quinn and NHL legend Gordie Howe are among the Vancouver ownership group.
Quebec head coach Patrick Roy knows that if the Remparts win the Memorial Cup nobody will remember that they lost to Moncton in the QMJHL final.
"We're going into the tournament through the back door (as the second QMJHL representative)," he said yesterday. "But we feel we can come out through the front door."
Quebec goaltending coach Benoit Fortier, 48, is back in the city that he once called home. He was a goaltender for the Universite de Moncton Aigles Bleus of the Atlantic Universities Hockey Conference from 1978-83.
"I have a lot of good memories of my time here," he said. "I played five seasons with the Aigles Bleus with Jean Perron as head coach. We won four Atlantic titles and two Canadian championships so that was a special time for sure.
"Moncton has sure grown a lot since my playing days here. I was talking to people who told me the city has doubled in population since back then. It's a lot of fun for me to be back here now for the Memorial Cup."
The CHL - on its website
www.chl.ca - asked this fan poll question a couple of weeks ago: Which club would you most like to see hoist the Memorial Cup this season?
There were 2,318 votes cast as of last night. The breakdown was 38 per cent of the vote for Vancouver, 23 per cent for Peterborough, 20 per cent for Moncton and eight per cent for Quebec.
The fan poll was launched before the four tournament qualifiers were determined. That explains why 11 per cent of the votes were cast for teams not in the competition.
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