Minor League Hockey Shake-up...coming

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, throwuascenario said:

a team across the country who's fans and management couldn't place Raleigh on a map?

The bonus round from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego but you have to put the pylons on all the cities with "surprisingly good craft beer scenes"

[Burmy]

46 minutes ago, Ridleylash said:

I'd imagine this is part of the current drama going on in the AHL in regards to Scott Howson.

 

And there is historic precedent for AHL teams that are independent of any NHL franchise, yes, it just hasn't happened in a while; not since early in the IceCats' first season of 94-95.

I thought the AHL had banned independent teams somewhere around the time of the IHL merger...

[JerseyJimmy]

worth noting, the ECHL does allow unaffiliated teams - Norfolk didn't have an affiliate in 2019-20. predictably, they were awful that year. then again, come to think of it, they've been awful every year since they dropped down.

[rams80]

9 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

I'd imagine this is part of the current drama going on in the AHL in regards to Scott Howson.

 

And there is historic precedent for AHL teams that are independent of any NHL franchise, yes, it just hasn't happened in a while; not since early in the IceCats' first season of 94-95.

 

And that team was a disaster.  Which is why they don't try to have Indy teams anymore.

[Sodboy13]

I get the Wolves constantly being at loggerheads with their affiliates since Atlanta (the Thrashers were easy enough to work around because Atlanta Spirit was too busy suing itself to know what was going on,) but boy this seems like a recipe for disaster unless they've definitely got other teams lined up for the ride. You're gonna field an entire team of veteran castoffs with fewer than 260 pro games on their resumes? Or what, you're gonna make like the Frankes 15 years ago and fund your own IHL, with a Turner Cup, and hookers, in fact, forget the Turner Cup because it just fell apart on the ice?

[monkeypower]

First article of a mini-series detailing the breakup of the Hurricanes and the Wolves from the Wolves GM Wendell Young's  perspective.

 

Quote

But even though the Wolves won the 2022 Calder Cup with the Carolina affiliation, it was won with plenty of turmoil along the way - including at one point, according to Young, Carolina threatening to fire the team's then-head coach Ryan Warsofsky during the 2022 Calder Cup Finals if he continued to play goaltender Alex Lyon over Hurricanes prospect goalie Pyotr Kochetkov.

 

Quote

 

"Our coach was told: 'don't worry about winning this year'.," Young told InsideAHLHockey.com Monday, referring to Carolina brass telling then head-coach Brock Sheehan heading into the 2022-23 season to focus solely on developing the organization's top prospects.

 

Young's hands, despite being the AHL club's GM, were seemingly tied.

 

"Our coach was being dictated on who to play in goal," Young explained to InsideAHLHockey.com. "Lineups had to go through Carolina."

 

Young explained that attempts to improve the roster via trades/loans at the AHL level were repeatedly struck down by Carolina.

 

"We were trying to correct it all year. We didn't sign up [for this]," Young told InsideAHLHockey.com. "We didn't sign up to not be competitive."

 

[The_Admiral]

Sounds like Tom Dundon was one move away from goading Don Levin and the village of Rosemont into arranging a "boating mishap"

[Cosmic]

I guess I don't really understand how affiliation deals work. Carolina was going to fire the coach in Chicago? But they don't own the team?

[The_Admiral]

Traditionally the assistant GM of the NHL team is the de facto GM of the AHL team and the AHL coaching staff basically serves at the pleasure of the NHL team's front office. I think that's how it's been with Chicago and Rockford, but that's a weird case because for all those years Rockford was under absentee public ownership. But with the Wolves, I have a really tough time figuring out how the meme boys were going to big-time an established AHL front office that's been in place through a few affiliations. Either the Wolves tried to meet a team halfway for once and ceded control only to wish they hadn't, or the Hurricanes are a bunch of bloviating hucksters who never had that sway to begin with, and you already know which way I lean on that one.

[LMU]

The Wolves have always been known for disregarding the wishes of their affiliate club when it comes to roster management hence why they've always had a revolving door situation.  It sounds like the Hurricanes were just the one club push back and with so many other AHL clubs being owned and operated by the parent club for development purposes the Wolves saw that their act wasn't going to fly anymore unless they went independent.

[chcarlson23]

Haven’t the Hurricanes also had issues with affiliates as well? I thought they had something good with the Checkers, but then that went south. Didn’t the Checkers have all sorts of issues with the Hurricanes and their “needs”? 
 

So a Hurricanes-Chicago Wolves affiliation relationship is like a worst-case scenario. A heavy-handed NHL club which has already dissolved a few affiliations within the last couple of seasons, and an AHL club known for trying to be a pro-team, rather than just a farm team…

[The_Admiral]

22 hours ago, LMU said:

The Wolves have always been known for disregarding the wishes of their affiliate club when it comes to roster management hence why they've always had a revolving door situation.

The Wolves spent about a decade as the affiliate of the Atlanta Thrashers, a team the Atlanta Hawks ran out of a broom closet. If you were trying to make money and please competitive ownership while running a 17,000-seat arena every night in a market where the NHL team was pissing itself on a daily basis, would you let the Atlanta Thrashers push you around? 

[Kevin W.]

On 8/26/2023 at 11:07 AM, monkeypower said:

First article of a mini-series detailing the breakup of the Hurricanes and the Wolves from the Wolves GM Wendell Young's  perspective.

 

 

 

I mean, I kind of get the Hurricanes' side too. The prospects are there to play and develop, not sit on the bench.

[Sykotyk]

How much do the parent NHL clubs contribute to player salaries and any sort of contractual obligations?

 

In baseball, there's a huge chunk of player pay and oversight that is covered by the parent club while the minor league teams mostly worry about the day-to-day operations of selling tickets and managing the logistics of the organization.

[Ridleylash]

On 8/29/2023 at 8:33 AM, chcarlson23 said:

Haven’t the Hurricanes also had issues with affiliates as well? I thought they had something good with the Checkers, but then that went south. Didn’t the Checkers have all sorts of issues with the Hurricanes and their “needs”?

Why would the Canes be the ones to break what was an extremely good affiliation for both parties and instead affiliate with a team known for giving 0 :censored:s about developing prospects that has bounced all over the place before now as an affiliate? This seems more like it's an issue with Charlotte's ownership butting heads with the Canes and deciding to split.

[Geoff]

On 8/30/2023 at 10:48 AM, Sykotyk said:

How much do the parent NHL clubs contribute to player salaries and any sort of contractual obligations?

 

In baseball, there's a huge chunk of player pay and oversight that is covered by the parent club while the minor league teams mostly worry about the day-to-day operations of selling tickets and managing the logistics of the organization.

Most AHL players are on NHL contracts and often provide the GM of the AHL team meaning they're the ones calling the shots for players on AHL contracts too.

 

In the ECHL, there's a growing amount of influence but it's still a majority of the league that's on ECHL contracts without being guided by an NHL team's whims.

[Burmy]

Am I the only one who still wonders when the AHL started to allow independent teams again?

[The_Admiral]

On 8/31/2023 at 4:50 PM, Ridleylash said:

Why would the Canes be the ones to break what was an extremely good affiliation for both parties and instead affiliate with a team known for giving 0 :censored:s about developing prospects that has bounced all over the place before now as an affiliate?

"Why would the Hurricanes ever do anything wrong?" is a weird tack to take. This has never been the model of organizational excellence.

[throwuascenario]

On 9/2/2023 at 3:07 AM, the admiral said:

"Why would the Hurricanes ever do anything wrong?" is a weird tack to take. This has never been the model of organizational excellence.

 

Dundon does not like spending money off the ice. That's why he canned two legendary announcers that he thought were getting paid too much.

 

I always had the notion that they got a better offer from Chicago, so they took it. And it blew up in their faces. Apart from spitting in the face of any fans they have in the largest city in the state. They should just set up a new AHL team in Chapel Hill or something at this point.

[Geoff]

On 9/1/2023 at 11:57 PM, Burmy said:

Am I the only one who still wonders when the AHL started to allow independent teams again?

They never stopped allowing it. There was a certain sect of people, myself included, who interpreted the AHL's rules as saying you needed an affiliation to join the league but you're not required to maintain membership.