BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – The final long-distance road trip of the Hartford Wolf Pack season occurs this weekend when they head to North Carolina to do battle with the AHL’s best team, the Charlotte Checkers for a pair of weekend games as part of their team’s final ten games.
The Wolf Pack, who have a record of 28-29-6-3 (65 pts), come off a weekend split with a less than sterling effort in Syracuse against the Crunch followed by a very strong effort in Utica against the Comets.
The Pack will enter these games without the services of two of their most solid offensive players and it’s likely for the remainder of the regular season.
The two include the team’s leading scorer and the AHL’s top scoring defenseman, John Gilmour, who has 20 goals, and a team-leading 33 assists (53 pts). He is nine points behind tying the Pack record for points by a defenseman that’s held by Andrew Hutchison. They will also be without Vinni Lettieri who has a team-high 23 goals (46 pts) in 44 games. Both were recalled by the parent, New York Rangers on Monday.
The Wolf Pack also released forward, Greg Chase, after three scoreless games. They sent him to back to their ECHL affiliates, the Maine Mariners. The Pack also brought back Drew Melanson for his third recall of the season and has played just nine games and added one goal.
The early 2019-20 training camp has begun with the free agent signings of Nick Jones from North Dakota, (NCHC) and Ryan Dmowski (East Lyme, CT) from UMASS0-Lowell, (HE) who played his high school hockey at Gunnery Prep (Washington, CT). They were all signed to ATO deals.
“Whenever you have a season like this, and that is a big part of what happens with players, they’re going to be on the lookout for players for next season. You’re trying to balance not slowing things down too much back to October and training camp and re-teach everything.
“So you’re teaching and keeping structure, fine-tuning things and letting the new players know the basics of what we’re trying to do, and usually don’t want to bombard them with too much information, because of all of a sudden the skill level that got them here isn’t used because they’re overthinking things too much,” McCambridge said of his current coaching style as he heads in the final 10 games of the year.
Jones played just 26 games missing playing time with two separate injuries in his senior season.
He managed 50 points in 60 games in his junior and senior seasons for North Dakota.
He transferred from Ohio State (Big 10) and sandwiched in between he played two years of Canadian Junior A hockey with Penticton Panthers (BCHL) to preserve his NCAA eligibility.
Dmowski finished out his four-year collegiate career with the UMASS-Lowell RiverHawks with 67 points in 132 games with the Hockey East school. On November 16th, he was the first star in the River Hawks 5-2 win over UCONN. Dmoski tallied two goals in the winning effort.
Each player is likely to get a game this weekend and McCambridge is careful with players he has seen just for a couple of practices.
“It’s that time of year when we get several players on ATO deals here, and the lineup fluctuates quite a bit. They bring excitement and a gray area as well, getting their feet wet and grasping systems. They’re trying to fit in and fill in spots that we have with Vinni and John going up to the NHL which we’re happy about,” said McCambridge.
To replace Gilmour’s spot, the team received Matt Register on loan from the Toledo Walleye (ECHL) on a PTO contract.
Register, an eight-year pro, has a very extensive ECHL resume having played on the last three ECHL Kelly Cup champions, the Colorado Eagles back-to-back winners before going to the AHL this year and the Allen Americans in 2015-16. He has led the league in scoring by defensemen from 2016 through 2018 and was voted “Defenseman of the Year” three times. He was a First Team All-Star three times and has 319 points in 403 career games.
He played Junior A hockey with the Bonnyville Pontiacs (AJHL) 2009-10 and was a First-team All-Star and Defenseman of the Year that season. However, professionally he has just one AHL recall, to the Chicago Wolves, for six games.
The forward and defense positions will experience a lot of new combinations this weekend. Defenseman Ryan Lindgren playing with Brandon Crawley after experiencing a season with John Gilmour primarily.
“It was a lot of fun playing with John and we also got well off the ice too. Happy for him to get a recall. He’s a heck of a hockey player I played most of the year with him with exception of a few games. He such an easy guy to play with just give him the puck, he’s such a good skater let him fly.
“Now we’re all going to have to make changes and adjustments with so many new faces,” said Lindgren.
The Charlotte Checkers their weekend opponent who has been racing through the league finally hit a bump in the road with a major injury.
Checkers head coach Mike Vellucci announced on the team website that the team’s first line center, Janne Kaukkonen, was lost for the year with season-ending surgery. He did not specify the nature of where the injury was.
The trade made by Charlotte to acquire forward Tomas Jurco from the Springfield Thunderbirds, the AHL affiliate of the Florida Panthers, that much more important. Jurco is paired with another of their elite prospects in Czech-born, Martin Necas, and they have seven points in eight games with three goals.
“They are a very impressive team and the record they have. It’s impressive because of their distance (from their nearest opponents) many of their games are back-to-back. I know, speaking from experience, (coached in St. John’s) that it’s tough to do and they have maintained their consistency all season despite that.
“Look, they have one guy go down who had size and speed, and they were able to replace him with somebody with size and speed and the same attributes,” remarked McCambridge.
The Checkers have a record of 42-15-7-1, (92 pts), 27 points above the Wolf Pack. Another of their fleet of top young players, Aleksi Saarela, originally a New York Rangers draft pick, was suspended by the AHL for two games on Monday and missed their mid-week meetings with Syracuse, who are now within four points of the Checkers for first overall in the AHL as they lead the North Division.
“They are the league’s best team. We got a lot of new faces, so it’ going to be a big test for us if we play well, we can get a couple wins here,” said Lindgren.
