BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – The Hartford Wolf Pack was the first to fire their head coach at the conclusion of the 2018-19 regular season are still looking making them the last to hire a head coach for the upcoming 2019-20 regular season.
As of 5 pm Friday, the New York Rangers’ AHL affiliates do not have ANY coaching staff while the remaining 31 AHL teams are just filling in some of the few open staff positions and hockey operations.
The 15-week search has come up empty thus far in christening a seventh head coach for the team in its 23-year history.
The latest team to fill a spot this week was the Iowa Wild when they hired Alex Tanguay, a former teammate of Hartford GM Chris Drury. He was named as an assistant coach by the Wild. The San Antonio Rampage has yet to replace ex-Pack coach, J.J. Daigneault, who left for Halifax (QMJHL) to be a head coach. In fact, including San Antonio, only three teams, excluding the Wolf Pack, have not completely filled out their coaching staffs for the upcoming season.
Most teams have five coaches, a head coach, two assistants, a goalie coach, and a video coach. A few have just four, but the aggregate number is five. Two actually have six coaches. In the past, at the AHL level, there would be just one head coach.
The Springfield Thunderbirds and San Antonio have yet to add a second assistant coach. The AHL Champion Charlotte Checkers have hired a new head coach in Ryan Warsofsky, but have two assistant spots open. That’s all that remains in the AHL at this point.
Through a variety of sources, eight candidates have been interviewed for the Wolf Pack job. One of the few names confirmed was Mike Vellucci, the Calder Cup-winning coach in Charlotte, and The Louis A. Pieri, AHL Coach of the Year. He took the job in Wilkes Barre/Scranton with the Penguins. The man he replaced there was another BU alumni, Clark Donatelli.
Ex-Hartford Whaler, Kevin Dineen, took the job in the San Diego Gulls and the aforementioned Tanguay were interviewed, but nobody has taken the top job or an assistant coach to date. Also confirmed is that two of the eight were offered the top job, but turned it down.
The Rangers did hire Jarmo Ruutu, the youngest of the three former hockey-playing Ruutu brothers, to be their European scout. He will work and keep in continual contact with Rangers European draft picks and prospects. As a player, he skated in 735 NHL games tallying 368 points with Chicago, Carolina, and New Jersey.
Brother Jarkko played 652 NHL games with Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Ottawa and Anaheim and is currently a Development coach with Columbus/Cleveland. Mikko played one season of college hockey at Clarkson (ECACHL), but played mostly in the Finnish Elite League and now is the Director of European scouting for the Ottawa Senators.
Tanner Glass was hired last month and will be operating out of Seattle, WA in the same capacity.
The organizational contract situation, however, is in crisis at this point.
In a surprise signing, the Rangers inked RFA Vinni Lettieri to a one-year, two-way deal while in a salary-cap crunch. The deal is slightly puzzling in that he gets a $30K raise on the AHL side to $100K, but the NHL money drops from $925K to $700K. Where is the upside for Lettieri? Unless something radically changes, he’s not going to get many minutes in of ice time in New York.
Friday night, prior to Monday’s arbitration hearing, the Rangers announced a two-year, $3.25M per year deal with Pavel Buchnevitch leaving Brendan Lemieux and Tony D’Angelo as the only unsigned RFA’s left for the Rangers. It’s interesting that the Rangers signed Lettieri with Lemieux still?
The Rangers are the most of any team over the salary cap. They’re exceeding it by $4,156,466 and are only permitted to be 10% above the cap during the off-season. This will require some serious player trades or buyouts by the required cap day – the day before the regular season begins, October 3rd to be in full compliance under the present CBA agreement.
The team has 23 NHL contracts, which is the required roster limit at the NHL level. They now have 44 total organizational contracts, six under the maximum permitted of 50. The signing of Lettieri gives the Rangers an equal amount of forwards (14) and defensemen (8) between the NHL and AHL as well as five goalies.
In terms of AHL-only contracts, they’ve signed free agents, Jeff LoVerde, Thomas McCollum, and Harry Zolnierczyk, but they do not count in the overall organizational contract number.
Matt Beleskey enters the last year of his four-year deal that was signed as a member of the Boston Bruins. Brendan Smith, Kevin Shattenkirk, and Marc Staal are all potential Hartford salary dumps or buyouts that would help in alleviating their cap dilemma. Toronto, Washington, Pittsburgh, Vegas, are all over the cap and everybody’s favorite, Arizona, is just below the threshold with a cap space of just $178,099.
Those five teams seem like the most logical potential trading partners. The Maple Leafs are in a worse position than the Rangers. They have yet to sign young superstar, Mitch Marner, who is looking for a deal worth in excess of $10 million.
One correction from last week’s Off-Season Volume 12 edition, new signee Philippe Di Guiseppe’s contract is a one year, but a two-way deal $125K-AHL/$700K-NHL.
All cap figures come from capfriendly.com.
