| Message from Bobby Smith
Congratulations on being a candidate to join the Halifax Mooseheads Hockey Club. Our goal is to be the best franchise in the Canadian Hockey League. The most important measure of our progress towards this goal is the success of our players…as students, citizens and hockey players. We understand that our hockey club has an important responsibility to the young men who invest their teenage years with us.
I am an excellent example of how Major Junior hockey can positively influence a young person. As a seventeen-year-old rookie with the Ottawa 67's I was an average third-line player. One full season competing with and against the best teenaged hockey players in the world greatly improved my play. As an eighteen-year-old I led the league in goals and in my final year of Major Junior hockey I set a single-season scoring record that still stands. I was the first player chosen in the 1978 NHL draft and as an NHL rookie I led my team in scoring and won the Rookie of the Year Award. In my case, only the training provided by Major Junior hockey could have turned a seventeen-year-old kid who played hockey into a hockey player ready for the rigors of the National Hockey League.
During my three years of Major Junior hockey I completed high school and attended university part-time. The discipline and time management I learned as a teenager have served me well in the ensuing years. I chipped away at my education during my fifteen-year NHL career and completed a Bachelor of Science in Business and a Master of Business Administration when my career ended.
I view the Halifax Mooseheads as being in the business of helping to develop successful young men. Some of our players will go on to rewarding and lucrative careers in professional hockey. Others will take advantage of the opportunity provided by the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the Mooseheads’ scholarship programs to earn university and post-graduate degrees. Everything we do, from ensuring terrific billet families, insisting on academic performance and availing our players to our chapel program is geared toward helping our players succeed in hockey and in life.
Please spend a few minutes in the “Players Only” section of our web site to learn about the experience that awaits future members of the Halifax Mooseheads. We expect a lot from our players on the ice and in the community. In return, we take our responsibility to our players very seriously.
Sincerely,
Bobby Smith |
