Homegrown hockey history: Regiment recruits NL's Veitch, Norman with first-ever picks in QMJHL draft
Armed with an internal plan to select the most talented players available with their three historic first-round picks in the 2025 QMJHL Draft, the hockey gods smiled upon Newfoundland Regiment general manager Gordie Dwyer as he sat on the draft floor at the Videotron Centre in Quebec City on Friday night, June 6.
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As luck would have it, when Dwyer and the Regiment contingent took to the podium in front of thousands of excited junior hockey fans to make their first-ever draft selections at fifth, sixth and eighth overall, the best players available just so happened to be a pair of talented Newfoundlanders and the son of a prolific former St. John's Maple Leaf.
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St. John's native and six-foot-four power forward Benjamin Veitch officially entered the Newfoundland hockey history books as the Regiment's first-ever draft pick, coming in at fifth overall.
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With the very next pick at sixth overall, the Regiment continued to make their growing season-ticket base happy when they selected Conception Bay South native Quinn Norman with their second selection, the first-ever defenseman drafted by the club.
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Rounding out their trio of first-rounders with the eighth overall pick, the Regiment selected the top-ranked Nova Scotian in the draft in Phenwick MacLean, son of former AHL all-star Donald MacLean, who spent parts of three seasons in St. John's between 1999 and 2002.
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Dwyer says draft weekend was critical for the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League's newest team and wasn't exactly shy about sharing his excitement about the team's newest recruits and what the draft might mean for the club's inaugural season.
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'We definitely feel like the draft was a success for us,' Dwyer told The Telegram.
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'Truthfully, we were thrilled to be able to land both of those (local) boys with picks five and six. Then, to be able to land Phenwick MacLean with pick number eight, those were our three targets for the first day. We were thrilled about being able to call those three guys' names.'
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Entering the draft as the seventh-ranked skater from across Atlantic Canada and Quebec, Veitch wasn't worried that he wouldn't get chosen — he was worried that he would get chosen too early and not get the chance to live out his dream of playing at home in front of his friends and family.
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