QMJHL approves relocation of Acade-Bathurst Titan to St. John’s, Newfoundland

One of the longest-standing junior hockey franchises is moving from one Maritime province to another.

On Friday, the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League announced the approval to relocate the Acadie-Bathurst Titan to St. John’s, Newfoundland for the 2025-26 season. During a press conference, the league revealed the sale happened on Thursday night.

Serge Thériault, one of the Titan’s 11 shareholders, admitted that it was a sad day.

″The Titan has been an integral part of the Bathurst community for 27 years,” Thériault said. The team gave us great moments and rallied the population. Unfortunately, we were playing in the smallest major junior market in Canada, and attendance dropped over the years. This made it impossible for us, the owners, to continue.″

League commissioner Mario Cecchini admitted the league wanted to keep the team in Bathurst.

“I said it last January when the sale process began: The objective of the QMJHL and the Titan owners has always been to find local investors to keep the team in Bathurst,” noted Commissioner Mario ” Cecchini said. “However, none of the interested groups had any intention of operating the team in Bathurst in the medium term. My heart goes out to the Titan fans. I sympathize and understand their pain and frustration.″

The QMJHL stated that the franchise is now owned by John Harvey Patten, John R. Steele and Jason Sharpe. An official press conference will be held next month in St. John’s.

This will be the first franchise relocation in the QMJHL since the defunct Lewiston Maineiacs were resurrected in 2012, becoming the Sherbrooke Phoenix. It will be the first QMJHL franchise in St. John’s since the St. John’s Fog moved to Verdun, Quebec 16 years ago, becoming the Montreal Junior Hockey Club (now known as the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada).

Bathurst, New Brunswick, has been the home of the Titan since the team moved from Laval in 1998. The franchise has experienced great success over the years, winning the President’s Cup in 1999 and 2018, with future NHLers Noah Dobson and Jeffrey Viel helping the team win the Memorial Cup in 2018.

Unfortunately, the team has experienced problems in attracting fans in recent years. Over the past two-plus seasons, the Titan have been one of the lowest-attended teams in the QMJHL. During the 2022-23 and 2023-24 campaigns, the team attracted less than 1,700 fans inside the K. C. Irving Regional Centre–which has a hockey capacity of 3,524. So far this season, Acadie-Bathurst has been averaging 1,540 fans per home game, the lowest in the league.

The relocated franchise will play at the Many Brown’s Centre, which has a capacity of 6,287.

Some relocation conversations surrounded the franchise over the last decade or so. In 2009, the team was given a 30-day relocation application extension. However, the team stayed in New Brunswick thanks to a couple of sales, including one by a group of local investors, headlined by Philadelphia Flyers star Sean Couturier, in April 2013.

The team announced last January that they were up for sale, and began a search for new ownership.

The province of Newfoundland has been without a top-tier hockey team since the Newfoundland Growlers, formerly of the ECHL, abruptly ceased operations near the end of the 2023-24 regular season due to bankruptcy after over five years of operation. St. John’s has been the home for many pro hockey teams over the years. The Toronto Maple Leafs had their American Hockey League affiliate in the city, then known as the St. John’s Maple Leafs from 1991-2005. The Manitoba Moose would relocate to St. John’s, becoming the IceCaps, serving as the Winnipeg Jets’ premier farm team from 2011-15. The Montreal Canadiens would take over from 2015-17 before relocating the franchise to Laval.