BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – The 23rd edition of Hartford Wolf Pack hockey will kick off on Saturday night, October 5th at the XL Center. The Pack wills tart their season against a team that tortured them throughout all of the 2018-2019 campaign. They are the Atlantic Division winners, and the defending Calder Cup champion, Charlotte Checkers. The Carolina Hurricanes’ AHL affiliate will be a decidedly different team than the Pack faced last year as twelve players have already departed from the team.
Hopefully, the Wolf Pack, minus players from last year’s team, will hopefully be a much-improved group than the one that left the ice in April. They were dead last in the division and missed the playoffs for a sixth consecutive season.
The Wolf Pack start the first month of the season with seven of their first eight games at home.
The Pack will have five straight at the XL Center following the home opener on Saturday night. There will be a 3 pm Sunday game with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. In the second weekend, their other fiercest rival will debut as they follow the same as the previous week with the Springfield Thunderbirds and the Rochester Americans. The third weekend, the team will have their first Friday night game against Springfield (7:15 pm) and their first real road game in Binghamton against the Devils comes the following night.
They will then close out the first month of the season with the Laval Rocket and then Bridgeport on Saturday night and then Sunday afternoon.
The scheduling matrix features no new opponents. It consists of three Sunday games, eight Wednesday dates, which is the most poorly drawing date for Wolf Pack games. Seven of the eight are in the final third of the season when hopefully the Pack will be in a playoff push.
The first Wednesday game is the annual 11:00 am game which this season features the Syracuse Crunch on November 20th. There will be a New Year’s Day game (Tuesday) at 5:00 pm against Bridgeport, and their first long road stretch, where they will play six-of-seven on the road, will come at the end of November into early December.
