For the first time since Boxing Day, the Avenir Centre is quiet, but the excitement and impact of the 2023 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship is far from over in the city.
“This is exactly why we built the Avenir Centre,” said Moncton Mayor Dawn Arnold.
With both pre-tournament ice time and 12 tournament games in the books, Arnold says the World Juniors helped prove that Moncton can “welcome the world” to the city.
“We’d be touring that building and they’d say, ‘Someday we’ll be able to host an international event like the World Juniors and the media will be able to set up here and do a live broadcast… to see that come to fruition and to see the ease in which we can get this amazing coverage to 150 million viewers worldwide, you can’t buy that kind of coverage,” she said, reflecting back on when the Avenir Centre was still being built.
Generally speaking, cities have two years to organize the World Juniors tournament, but Moncton and Halifax were put on a much tighter deadline, pulling it together in a matter of weeks.
Jillian Somers, the Chief Executive Officer of Destination Moncton-Dieppe says that the international invitation couldn’t have come at a better time for local businesses.
“The time of year is typically a little bit slower over the holidays, so being able to host an event of this size and scope, I mean, it’s kind of a once in a generation thing anyways, but to be able to do it at this time and following such a difficult time over COVID-19 was just double the bonus,” said Somers.
It wasn’t just hockey that people got to experience. Somers says one of Destination Moncton-Dieppe’s main goals was to promote other tourist attractions and events all across the region.
“We wanted to take advantage of the fact that we’re going to have literally millions of eyes on our destination for this point of time, whether they were enjoying the games here in Moncton or watching us live on TV or online,” she said. “Our goal was really to keep people moving around the region, to experience a lot... hopefully it wet their appetite and they'll be back again."
Officials say the economic impact report should be out in the next few months, providing concrete numbers on just how big of an impact the World Juniors had in Moncton. But even without the final data, the success is being seen, especially at local hotels and restaurants.
"I walked Main Street pretty well every day, went into a lot of the bars and restaurants and they were all telling me how over the moon they were with the number of visitors they had,” said Bill Whalen, the co-chair for Team Moncton. “I think Moncton and Halifax have done both communities very proud with the way we’ve hosted this.”
Somers says, “On behalf of the hotel association, I know they were thrilled. Typically it would be a very quiet time, lower season from an occupancy perspective, and that wasn’t the case, obviously because we had a lot of guests.”
As for what’s to come, officials say it’s time to build on this momentum and see what other events Moncton can host in the future.
“Nothing concrete yet,” said Arnold. “But, certainly when you think of figure skating, you think of women’s hockey, you think of any number of events that we can certainly welcome to our community now.
“I think the sky’s the limit.”
