Halifax Thunderbirds cap successful season setting new record

The Halifax Thunderbirds will begin their playoff hunt next weekend.

The city’s professional lacrosse squad handed last-place Colorado Mammoth a 14-10 loss in front of a sold-out crowd at Scotiabank Centre on Saturday night, capping their season with a 10-8 record.

After the remaining National Lacrosse League (NLL) games finished up on Sunday, Halifax would wind up seeing their sixth-place finish secured and a locked-in playoff matchup against the third-place Albany FireWolves.

“It will be a one-and-done; it’s a single elimination game,” Thunderbirds president and CEO John Catalano told CityNews Halifax. “From there, we would have a best-in-three series so then we would be coming back to Halifax at that point, which would be either the first week of May or second week of May.”

The head of Halifax’s NLL team is excited about the Thunderbirds’ chances this year and is even more thrilled about the success of the season already behind them.

When the Thunderbirds started up in Halifax in 2019 — after relocating from New York state — they were delivered some challenges by way of the pandemic.

That inaugural season was shut down after just 12 games.

Half a decade later, the T-birds were averaging some 9,000 people per game this year — a number that doesn’t surprise Catalano.

“We expected to be here at some point,” he said. “We had this as a kind of five-year plan and we are here but we thought because of COVID, we thought it might have taken a couple more years to come together.”

Support has been strong with this year even notching a franchise attendance record of more than 10,000 for a pair of games, including Saturday’s finale.

The Thunderbirds playoff run begins Sunday, April 28 in Albany beginning at 3 p.m. EST.