For Halifax Mooseheads, comparisons to 2011 Sea Dogs premature, but their talent is proving tested

There is one comparison with that other recent Maritime hockey machine that makes Stephen Macaulay fairly light up.

Hockey players are well-drilled in the one-shift, one-period, one-game-at-a-time mantra, how a sea change can happen instantaneously in the playoffs. Rivalries between Atlantic Canada cities and sports chatter being what it is, though, now that Halifax Mooseheads have ripped off successive sweeps to begin the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoffs, comparisons to the 2011 Saint John Sea Dogs are just too tempting. The Sea Dogs, with current Florida Panthers bright hope Jonathan Huberdeau as a dominant 17-year-old on a well-balanced team, won a record-tying 58 regular-season games before capturing the President's Cup and the Maritimes' first Memorial Cup title. The Mooseheads, similarly balanced and with three 17-year-old top prospects in centre Nathan MacKinnon, left wing Jonathan Drouin and goalie Zach Fucale, tied that regular-season mark. They've also outscored opponents 46-9 so far in the post-season as they wait to learn their semifinal opponent, either the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies or Quebec Remparts.

"I think about it every now and then," is how Macaulay addresses the question he's inevitably asked since he was a big contrib for Saint John before joining his hometown Mooseheads at this season's trade deadline. "But for the most part, every team has its own identity. A lot of things are similar with the firepower we have. We have strong goaltending, strong defence as well. I think there's a lot of similarities but I try not to compare too much."

One similarity is how each team handled heading to the QMJHL's western outpost, the Robert Guertin Arena, honest-to-goodness hockey barn and home of the Gatineau Olympiques. Gatineau, under coach-GM Benoît Groulx, who can make anyone feel unarmed in a battle of wits, is always a playoff overachiever. Halifax managed to win both games there this week.

Mind you, it's apples to pomegranates to compare a second-round series with a league final. Yet it hearkened back to 2011. Saint John took the President's Cup by winning three times in one of the Q's toughest road environments.

"It was incredible," Macaulay recalls. "You really see how your team is made up when your backs are against the wall. We [Halifax] haven't had that much all season. But we're facing it the playoffs and we've done a good job with it so far."

That road-warrior effort spurred Saint John to new heights in the Memorial Cup. They won their first two games to earn the bye to the final, then beat Mississauga to add the second championship trophy.

'Little more desire'

Regarding the Mooseheads, how they carry that into the next series will be a storyline in the next round. Gatineau maxed out to try to extend its season and Halifax won still won four in a row. Drouin (five points in four games) and MacKinnon (seven, all assists) were more cogs in one big wheel during the series.

How Maritime teams adapt when they cross over to the QMJHL's other solitude always seems like a litmus test. It's all Halifax will see in the rest of the playoffs, too.

"The coaches prepared us a lot for what it would be like here — 3,500 screaming fans and they're pretty biased," says right wing Darcy Ashley. "It's a fun atmosphere to play in. As a hockey player growing up, you want to play in a loud barn at home and you want to play in a loud barn someplace else. It just gives us a little more desire any time you can come here and win two games in a row."

"It was all about having character, on the road," adds captain Stefan Fournier, who leads the Q in playoff scoring with 11 goals and 19 points in eight games. "We knew Gatineau is a tough arena, What is most important is we rose up to the occasion. There's not going to be any easy games from here on out."

There's a sneaking suspicion the 2011 Sea Dogs vs. '13 Mooseheads debate will boil to whether Halifax can capture a Memorial Cup to match the Port City's. That's oversimplifies it. The Sea Dogs, who accounted for four of the first 35 selections in the 2011 draft with Huberdeau, recent Montreal Canadiens call-up Nathan Beaulieu, Zack Phillips and Tomas Jurco, earned their epaulets as a powerhouse. It is also true that thanks to upsets, they did not face a team which finished in the top four during league playoffs. The Memorial Cup field in Mississauga — the host Majors with their brand of chokeout hockey, the Kootenay Ice from the WHL and OHL's Owen Sound Attack — also lacked a powerhouse on the scale of this season's Edmonton Oil Kings or Portland Winterhawks, who will be on their own league's turf next month in Saskatoon.

(One footnote is that the Sea Dogs also faced less travel between league playoffs and Memorial Cup than this season's QMJHL representative shall. Saint John was the third Q team to win a tournament in Ontario. Only one, the 1980 Cornwall Royals during the three-team, double round-robin era, has ever lifted the Cup in Western Canada.)

The QMJHL's Nos. 2 and 3 seeds, the Baie-Comeau Drakkar and Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, are very much alive in the President's Cup chase. Drakkar coach Éric Veilleux also helped stop Saint John's bid for a Memorial Cup repeat when he steered the well-rested host Shawinigan Cataractes to victory at the year-end tourney last spring. Hello, storyline.

Halifax winning the league might be enough to warrant a debate. It's out there until they lose a playoff game. No club has ever gone 16-0 since the Q went to having four rounds of best-of-7. Saint John went 16-1 last spring, as did the 2007 Lewiston MAINEiacs. The standard for playoff invincibility belong to the Pat Burns-coached 1986 Hull Olympiques, who went 15-0 while sweeping three best-of-9 rounds. Coincidentally, Mooseheads GM Cam Russell was a rookie D-man for those '86 'Piques, who lost the Memorial Cup final.

Know this much: Halifax passed a big test by getting by pesky Gatineau. It should serve them well while they're competing for a championship, not for a place in the sports bar-guments. That took root early on this season.

"Psychologists have said it forever, winning becomes a habit," says Fournier, whose great playoff to date has come after spending last season with the Victoriaville Tigres, who crashed and burned in the first round eternally remembered for a pregame Flying-V stunt that failed to push them to victory.

"What's important is you don't get nervous, you bounce back. That's the difference between a good team and a great team. That was something that we jumped on to right away at the beginning of the year. We kept riding the wave. Confidence is a hard thing to kill."

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet. Please address any questions, comments or concerns to btnblog@yahoo.ca.