32 AHL Thoughts - Inside AHL Hockey: 'Home Is Where The Heart Is' (11/28/23)

Carolina/AHL-Chicago Working Together Again? Where The AHL (& Its Teams) Stands On Neck Guards

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Things certainly aren't going well to start the season for the Chicago Wolves - the American Hockey League's (AHL) lone team operating without an NHL partner this season and first AHL team to do so since the 1994-95 season (Worcester).

A 4-0 loss at home to the Iowa Wild on November 11 extended the Wolves' winless streak to a season-high six games (0-5-1) with their 1-6-2 overall record at the time dead-last in the 32-team AHL entering their November 12 home contest against the Rockford IceHogs.

Without an NHL affiliate, Wolves GM Wendell Young has full control of the roster and day-to-day operations of the team. That roster began this summer with zero players.

His sales pitch over the summer to potential interested free agents was simple.

"No draft pick entitlement. Best player plays," he told InsideAHLHockey.com over the summer.

Chicago entered the season with 13 forwards, eight defensemen and two goaltenders - though Keith Kinkaid began the year in the NHL with the New Jersey Devils after sustaining a minor injury during training camp, so the Wolves added Julian Junca to a professional tryout contract before later signing him to an AHL deal and assigning him to ECHL Tulsa upon Kinkaid's arrival.

Young has continued to be active in finding ways to add talent in other ways, as he estimated nearly a half dozen or more NHL teams reached out over the summer to gauge potential interest in being a landing spot for players. While Young was open to working with NHL teams despite not having an NHL affiliation agreement, he ultimately didn't begin the year with any loaned players from NHL affiliates besides Kinkaid from the New Jersey Devils.

Just prior to the regular season, the Wolves added veteran AHL scorer Rocco Grimaldi to further bolster their offensive attack up front.

Then, a deal came with a player who spent the last three seasons playing in the NHL when the Wolves signed former Anaheim Ducks left wing Max Comtois.

Still, the Wolves seemingly found ways to come up short to start the season - with five of their eight losses on the season being one-goal setbacks (included are games with a late empty net tally against) - while allowing 34 goals in those opening nine games.

An interesting turn of events landed the Wolves an important piece from last year's team back in the fold, and, if the Chicago Wolves and Carolina Hurricanes are somehow to ever mend the fallout from going their separate ways without an affiliation agreement entering the 2023-24 season, perhaps it's Vasily Ponomarev that 'broke the ice' in getting Carolina and Chicago to work together in agreement to assign the player to the Wolves.

The Hurricanes originally assigned Ponomarev to the Tucson Roadrunners (Arizona) on November 2, with his first game - perhaps purely coincidental, perhaps not.... - coming on November 3 against the Chicago Wolves - his former team from last season.

"I don't know. I played against my home team. Every game against your hometown team, it's hard feelings to score. That's why I didn't score" Ponomarev joked with Chicago Wolves play-by-play broadcaster Jason Shaver after last Sunday's game against Rockford.

Ponomarev appeared in a total of two games with Tucson before requesting to be assigned to AHL-Chicago where had played last season and was familiar with some teammates, the rink, the city and community.

He got his wish last Saturday, as Carolina and Chicago came to an agreement and Ponomarev was loaned to the Wolves - flying into Chicago and getting to the rink to catch the end of the Wolves/Wild game on November 11.

Ponomarev was back in the Wolves lineup on November 12, making his return felt in providing a goal and an assist and sparking the Wolves to a 5-0 win over Rockford to snap their winless streak.

"I'm from Russia, but my home in the United States is Chicago. I had a little cry before the game," Ponomarev admitted to Shavers after that November 12 game.

Ponomarev explained he had to fly back to Raleigh to get his vehicle and belongings and make the drive from Raleigh, NC to Chicago, Ill - his home. He added that he was going to be staying with Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov while getting his things together before returning to Chicago.

Entering their next game Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Chicago is 4-9-2 and still in last place in the Central Division.

1. When the news came out about Ponomarev, I was a bit surprised - as I'm sure everyone was - that Carolina and Chicago made it work and did right by the player.

I was also told that while it was just a one-player agreement with Ponomarev, that that first move might've been an icebreaker to start the conversation back up about loaning more Carolina contracted players to the Wolves.

2. We at InsideAHLHockey.com later broke the news late that Saturday night that the Wolves and Hurricanes had come to an agreement that would see three more players - defensemen Domenick Fensore, Griffin Mendel and Ronan Seeley - join the Wolves. Those three players were in ECHL-Norfolk. STORY + LINK HERE

Fensore and Seeley made their first Wolves' appearance in Wednesday's school day game against Grand Rapids. For Fensore, it was his AHL debut.

3. I want to circle back quick and explain the second half of #1. I mention "start the conversation back up" because over the summer Wolves GM Wendell Young told InsideAHLHockey.com that despite not having an agreement in place with Carolina they were still willing to take on some players from the Hurricanes organization and that those talks ultimately didn't produce any such agreements. Lone Wolves Part 1: How Did It Come To This

4. Carolina, if you recall, opted to send several players to the nearest geographical ECHL team in Norfolk. I initially reported that several of the players refused/were unwilling to play in the ECHL.

Noel Gunler and Anttoni Honka later found places to play overseas, but now multiple sources have reached out to InsideAHLHockey.com detailing the same story I heard back when the assignments were made - that one player (not Gunler or Honka) returned home and was considering not playing in Norfolk before ultimately coming to the realization that it was either Norfolk or a season of no hockey at all - eventually joining the team just prior to the start of Norfolk's regular season.

5. The tragic death of Adam Johnson has shaken the hockey world to its core, and hockey leagues around the world are taking measures by mandating protective neck guards as an added part of the safety equipment players wear on the ice. The EIHL, the league in England in which the incident occurred, was the first to make a league-wide mandate - which began with an optional tag due to anticipated supply issues but will be in full effect on January 1.

All of the CHL leagues - the OHL, QMJHL and WHL - subsequently have instituted similar neck guard mandates.

6. What about the American Hockey League (AHL)?

So far, from speaking to a few league executives, a league-wide mandate isn't imminent at this time.

The belief is that the Board of Governors could bring a mandate to vote and vote it in with the approval of the Professional Hockey Players Association (PHPA), but that doesn't appear to be on the front burner right now.

7. So far, only one AHL team is mandated to wear neck guards - the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins - as the Pittsburgh Penguins mandated their AHL and ECHL players were some form of protective equipment on Tuesday, October 31.

The AHL Penguins got their first shipment of neck guards in time for their morning skate prior to their game against the Hershey Bears on Friday, November 3.

While there are many variations and different companies with cut-resistant neck protective hockey equipment - and players will have options available to them as supply issues are met - the team wore neck guards that Friday made with 100% cut-resistent polythylene from Skate Armor.

"It was fine. I mean, you're gonna get used to it," Penguins forward Marc Johnstone said after that Friday game, adding that the team was also going to be getting in new hockey shirts with neck guards built into the collar in the near future and that some players were going to try them out as well.

8. The main issue in the mandates for neck guards coming from hockey leagues across the world is that these protective neck guards are in incredibly high demand and the supply chain will need time to adjust to the current market's demand.

Skate Armor's website has more information about their neck guards, with the leading message being that they are currently sold out and not taking orders - adding that the wait could be 60+ days.

9. The early consensus from players are that the neck guards are uncomfortable, but the players volunteering to wear them are fine with a little discomfort if it provides an added level of protection.

"I think you're going to see more and more guys going to it, but there's a reason guys don't wear them," Coachella Valley Firebirds defenseman Connor Carrick told the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, CA. "They're not fun, they're not comfortable, they're very hot, but my thinking is if there's something you can do do it."

Carrick is one a few Firebirds players voluntarily wearing a neck guard.

10. Providence Bruins forward Jayson Megna was fortunate enough to get one of those built-in neck guards in the collar of the hockey shirt players wear underneath their equipment, and it sounds like it will be the preferred choice for players as compared to a separate neck guard worn almost like a neck wrap/brace.

"It's basically like a mock turtleneck, so for guys to say it would be uncomfortable or anything like that I don't think that's the case," Megna told InsideAHLHockey.com earlier this month of the neck guards built into the collar. "Me, personally, I wore it the first time out of a bag for a game and didn't even notice it."

11. The Providence Bruins players were among the first pro hockey players in North America in terms of players wearing neck guards, with Megna and several of his teammates wearing them in their October 29 game against Springfield.

"I may be seeing [things through] a different lens than a lot of other guys, especially in this league where the guys are younger. Having a wife and a kid at home, it's just an extra layer of protection," Megna said of his decision to wear one. "I think moving forward - the game happens so fast, things happen so quickly out there - so I think the more protection you can have, the better. And that's my own personal choice."

"I think they've done a great job, and I'm sure they will continue to do so," Megna told InsideAHLHockey.com about the breakthroughs made in hockey protective equipment. "You've seen it with the cut-proof socks. I think almost everyone is wearing those now. I have no problem with them. And you see the wrist guards. So I think this is probably the next evolution - the gear will continue to get better."

12. When I spoke to Providence head coach Ryan Mougenel earlier this month, he brought up several good points (as he always seems to do whenever I get a chance to talk hockey with him).

"I was thinking about it, but like a lot of our guys wore neck guards all the way up and then somewhere along the line we we stopped wearing them," Mougenel told InsideAHLHockey.com earlier this month. "So I don't know why that happened."

While Boston hasn't mandated their players in Providence wear neck guards, a lot of their players are already wearing them voluntarily.

"I'll be honest with you. I don't think it's a personal preference," Mougenel said of whether or not the AHL is at the personal preference stage of neck guard mandates, or whether they should look to making a league-wide mandate. "I think, if you think about it, one incident is too much. And you know, if you go down the line and the game, these things are happening. So why not be proactive?"

13. Rochester Americans head coach Seth Appert unfortunately has a past experience similar to Adam Johnson's when Appert was the head coach at RPI and one of his players, Brock Higgs , was cut in the neck by a skate of one of his teammates.

"Fortunately, we had a pre-med major on our team, Alex Angers-Goulet, that likely saved his life," Appert told longtime AHL beat reporter Patrick Williams. "He was able to get to him before the trainers, and likely saved his life. It's something I never want to see again," adding that what happened to Adam Johnson was heartbreaking.

Appert told local Rochester media on October 30 that he texted Rochester's equipment manager that weekend, and the first thing they did that Monday morning at 8am was purchased neck guards and cut-resistent turtle neck undershirts so players would have the option to wear them if they wanted to.

14. Out in Bakersfield, Condors GM Keith Gretzky was also quick to make sure neck guards and cut-resistent shirts were ordered and made available to their players.

"We ordered some for the players on Monday [October 30]," Gretzky told InsideAHLHockey.com's Mike Griffith back on November 3. "It's there for them to wear if they want it. We strongly encourage it, but it's not mandatory yet."

15. Strongly encouraged, but not mandatory seems to be the general consensus for AHL teams at this time. I got similar responses from those in Belleville and Calgary as well.

16. We had an AHL-level trade over the weekend.

The New Jersey Devils and New York Islanders made a swap of forwards with Arnaud Durandeau joining the Devils organization and reporting to AHL-Utica and Tyce Thompson joining AHL-Bridgeport.

On the surface, it looks like a change of scenery could do both players well.

Durandeau put up a career-high 55 points in 68 games last season, but had just a goal and three assists in 12 games with Bridgeport this season.

Thompson had five assists in 15 games with Utica this year, coming off a 26-point campaign in 2022-23 - his first full year of hockey at the AHL level.

17. There was another AHL trade on Monday as the Chicago Wolves sent defenseman Owen Headrick and forward Peter Abbandonato to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in exchange for future considerations.

With the Wolves' additions from Carolina, they had too many extra skaters on the roster and opted to move on from two players to give them a better opportunity at regular ice time elsewhere.

Abbandonato was in Pittsburgh Penguins' training camp on a PTO contract earlier this fall, while Headrick is last year's ECHL defenseman of the year and a player that Pens GM Kyle Dubas is familiar with from his time with the Soo going back to Headrick U16 days.

18. Here's one you don't see every day.

The start of Sunday's game in Toronto between the Toronto Marlies and Cleveland Monsters was delayed nearly 25 minutes.

The reason for the delay was that the Marlies' team doctor was stuff in traffic in downtown Toronto and was late arriving to the Coca Cola Colisiuem. By AHL rule, the game cannot be played without a team doctor on-site and in the building.

"It may surprise you to know that there's traffic in Toronto," quipped Marlies' play-by-play broadcaster Todd Crocker during the lengthy delay.

The game was able to begin after the Marlies' team doctor arrived.

19. It's been a season to forget thus far for the San Diego Gulls.

After beginning the year 2-0, the Gulls dropped 13 straight games (0-10-3) before eventually getting back in the win column with a 3-1 win over Chicago on Saturday night.

Seven of those 13 losses during the skid were one-goal defeats.

The Gulls got a big boost with the return of captain Chase De Leo, but it's going to be an uphill battle for San Diego in last place currently in the 10-team Pacific Division and already nine points out of a playoff spot.

20. When the Edmonton Oilers named Kris Knoblauch their new head coach on November 12, it left the Hartford Wolf Pack without a head coach on the day of their afternoon game in Providence, Rhode Island.

Of course, then-Wolf Pack assistant coach Steve Smith was appointed as the AHL club's interim head coach and the team went on to lose to Providence 3-2 in overtime in Smith's AHL head coaching debut.

From there, it's gone pretty well for Smith and Hartford as they regrouped from that Sunday loss in Providence to the tune of a 5-1 win on home ice the following Wednesday. After a 5-3 loss to Syracuse, the team has since rattled off four straight wins and sits second place in the Atlantic Division with a 12-4-2 record through their first 18 games.

21. The Buffalo Sabres assigned goaltender Devin Levi to Rochester on Tuesday, creating a bit of a logjam of netminders in the AHL as the Americans now have Devin Cooley, veteran Dustin Tokarski and the incoming Devon Levi.

On 95.7 FM Radio The Fan Rochester with Gene Battaglia, Amerks head coach Seth Appert said of Levi's addition:

"I anticipate [Devon Levi] will be in over the weekend at some point. We've got two very good goalies in Dustin Tokarski and Devin Cooley, but I know my responsibility at any position: our young prospects need ice time and need to develop."

22. Speaking of goalies, I got the chance to see Minnesota Wild's top goalie prospect Jesper Wallstedt play in person for the first time over the weekend - with the Iowa Wild in Hershey against a dominant defending champion Bears team (more on that below).

It's easy to see why everyone is ranting and raving about Wallstedt. He's big, always in position, has great rebound control and is seemingly always as cool as the other side of the pillow - making difficult saves look easy.

He misunderstood a question I asked him about what he's working on while in the AHL and if consistency and putting together a 'body of work' was key, but it still made for quite the quote anyway.

"I don't know. I'm not the one making the decisions. I'm just playing wherever I am," Wallstedt told InsideAHLHockey.com, adding, "Every day I'm putting in the work - if they put me here or in the ECHL or in the NHL - I'm just going to work my ass off and see how it goes, and continue developing and improving."

I'll have the full story on Wallstedt for Inside AHL Hockey subscribers, hopefully, later this week.

23. With coaching changes in Minnesota, there will be a direct impact on the Iowa Wild's staff as assistant coach Patrick Dwyer will be joining the Wild's NHL staff as an assistant coach under new head coach John Hynes.

24. I love going to the Giant Center to catch a game. It's an easy ~180 miles (round trip) - mostly of which is done on Interstate 81.

I especially love games at the Mohegan Sun Arena, home of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins which is about a ~30 mile round trip for yours truly.

I also understand the AHL, especially in the Eastern Conference, is a travel by bus league in a league where travel expenses are always pointed to as the reason for heavy doses of nearby geographical opponents.

The Hershey Bears and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins play each other 12 times on their respective 72-game regular season schedules, and it has become incredibly tedious - for all involved - that the two teams are not only facing each other that many times, but also the frequency in which the two teams are playing each other early in the 2023-24 season.

Wednesday's Hershey at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton game on November 29 will mark the third Wednesday in a row that the two teams will play each other, and it will be the sixth meeting of the season between the two teams. That's 6 of the Bears' opening 20 games, and 6 of the Penguins opening 19 games - against the same opponent.

TLDR: It was incredibly refreshing to see the Hershey Bears play the Iowa Wild in a pair of games over the weekend.

"It was really nice to play a new team. It became a little redundant playing the same three teams for the last month or so," Bears' defenseman Chase Priskie told InsideAHLHockey.com after Sunday's 2-1 win over Iowa. "So for us, it was refreshing. Come in, see a new style of play, see some new players."

25. There's got to be some kind of fix for future seasons to either spread out the matchups of geographical neighbors, or outright reduce and even put a cap on how many times an AHL team can play another team (how about a maximum of 10 games?).

If travel expenses are the main concern, how about scheduling these nearby "rivalry" type games around holidays where hotel/airfare expenses are at their peak.

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins were traveling by plane to Charlotte on Thanksgiving Day - the third straight year the team was traveling on Thanksgiving to Charlotte - and that was after busing overnight from Hershey to Baltimore and staying at a hotel in Baltimore on Thanksgiving Eve into Thanksgiving Day.

Not cheap.

Imagine making a home-and-home series with the Penguins and Bears on Thanksgiving Eve and Black Friday, and just having to bus to and from Wilkes-Barre and Hershey around the holidays.

Making that same trip to Charlotte via plane at a different point in the year is considerably cheaper.

26. Getting back to the Hershey Bears, the defending Calder Cup Champions have been piling up the wins - with the 15 wins in their opening 19 games being a franchise record.

Reigning Calder Cup Playoffs MVP Hunter Shepard is 8-1-0 in net for Hershey (plus 2-0 in the NHL with Washington this season). "Backup" Clay Stevenson 6-3 with three shutouts, a 1.67 goals-against average and .932 save percentage.

The top-six forward core is buzzing as the top line from last year - Mike Vecchione, Mike Sgarbossa and Ethen Frank - is collecting goals regularly.

New additions up front like Alex Limoges and Pierrick Dube are also filling the net.

On defense, new arrival Chase Priskie is quarterbacking the power play and piling up points as a result. The power play had been an area head coach Todd Nelson said was struggling, but that has seemingly taken a positive step in the right direction.

Fourth liners - and penalty killing role players - Riley Sutter and Matt Strome are coming off career-high three-game points scoring streaks.

There's just a lot of things going Hershey's way to start the year.

Perhaps the scariest part of the Bears 15-4-0 record is that in arguably half of those 15 wins Hershey hasn't played particularly well but has found ways to win games throughout the first quarter of the season.

The Bears have won six straight and, if their past few games are any indication, they're working their way toward playing an even more complete game.

27. On Monday, the Charlotte Checkers took to the ice outdoors at Truist Field - home to the Charlotte Knights baseball team (Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox) -  in downtown Charlotte for the team's first skate on the ice they will play the Rochester Americans on in the Queen City Outdoor Classic on January 13.

The event will be the first professional outdoor hockey game in Charlotte as well as the 12th outdoor game in AHL history.