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AHL News by Tricia McMillan, Correspondent Player of the Week (Oct. 12): It was feast or famine the first weekend of the AHL, with some tremendous offensive performances, most notably from Jason Podollan, Byron Ritchie and Shane Willis, plus several shutouts including a double shutout. The AHL settled on giving the award to Cincinnati goaltender Tom Askey, who was responsible for one of the shutouts as he blanked Hershey on the Mighty Ducks' opening night. Askey stopped 33 shots for his fifth career shutout.
Player of the Week (Oct. 19): Fortunately the glaring error of the previous week was rectified the next week, as the AHL finally recognized Jason Podollan's amazing beginning to the season. The St. John's winger had six points during the second week of the season, including a hat trick which was his second of the season. He also had another goal plus two assists and stands atop the AHL scoring list. Player of the Week (Oct. 26): This time last year, he was in the NHL. But he didn't last long before going back to Finland, so he's still a rookie for Springfield and now Olli Jokinen has more hardware for his shelf. Jokinen had a six-point week for the Falcons, including five assists and a four-game point streak that lands him third on the rookie scoring list. The 1997 third overall pick in the draft has won the Finnish Elite League's Rookie of the Year award and appears to be aiming for another. Yakety-Yak: The AHL will host live chat sessions with the Players of the Week each week this season, subject to the player's availability but generally on Thursday evenings. Askey, Podollan and Jokinen have already been grilled by the fans; if you want to send them a question or just listen in, go to the AHL Official Web Page (www.canoe.ca/AHL) and join the party. If you miss the party, chat transcripts are also available on the site.
C What?: The Saint John Flames' season has begun just swimmingly, as they lost their first game and haven't lost one since. But they do have a problem. Their captain, Steve Bancroft, doesn't want to be there and has openly expressed his wish to be in the IHL. (Which would lead one to openly question what they were thinking when they gave him a C, but...) After much dilly-dallying, Calgary arranged to loan Bancroft to the IHL's Cincinnati Cyclones. The day Bancroft was to leave for Cincinnati, the Bruins called Calgary and asked if Bancroft could be loaned to Providence - and Calgary agreed. Not only is Bancroft still not in the IHL, but he played for Providence against Saint John the day after the loan. Time To Move On: The Tampa Bay Lightning's front office purge left them in need of an assistant general manager, a position which has now been filled by Hershey Bears President and Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Sports and Entertainment Group (HERSEG) VP Jay Feaster. Feaster has a pretty darn good hockey resum‚ to his credit, having been responsible for the Hershey Bears as well as HERSEG, and bringing with him recommendations from half the GMs in the NHL. However, his departure is well-timed given improprieties regarding HERSEG's acquisition of the State High School Football championship game, compounded by Feaster's retaliatory attacks on a witness who testified during state investigations. According to local media, Feaster antagonized several state legislators during the hearings, jeopardizing the Bears' attempts to get funding for a new arena. Feaster is also noted for firing LCS photographer Kevin Fischer and banning him from Hersheypark. You Belong To Me: Nor is the football game the only legal problem facing Hershey at the moment. The OHL's Sarnia Sting filed a lawsuit against the Bears claiming that Evgeny Lazarev is rightfully their property. The Sting also filed suit against Lazarev himself, his agent, and the Colorado Avalanche. The Sting had drafted Lazarev in this year's CHL Import Draft, so in theory he should be playing there despite being drafted by Colorado and assigned by the Avalanche to Hershey. However, somewhere in the myriad regulations regarding the CHL and NHL, Europeans aren't always subject to those rules and in some circumstances 18 and 19 year-old European draft picks can be and are assigned to the AHL. Colorado thought Lazarev fit the exemption and sent him to the Bears. Sarnia believes Lazarev isn't subject to the exemption and obtained an injunction preventing Lazarev from playing for Hershey until a court hearing on the matter scheduled for October 29. One does have to wonder just how interested Lazarev would be in playing for a team that sued him - can't blame him if he's not. Bear With Me: The bad news just kept on coming for Hershey as they lost their fifth straight game to Kentucky, 5-1, on Oct. 24. Steve Guolla had a three point night and John Nabokov stopped 34 of 35 shots before beating Marc Denis - with his fists. Yep, we had a bench clearing brawl with fighting goaltenders. Kentucky's Garrett Burnett (you thought someone else?) started the mess by fighting Hershey's Troy Crowder. That in itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that Burnett continued to punch Crowder long after Crowder had lost consciousness and the linesmen had separated them. Hershey's Scott Parker was unamused and left the bench to get at Burnett. Then everybody on both teams left their respective benches. Parker was ejected from the ice but returned twice, earning him a double game misconduct and eventually a seven game suspension; Burnett picked up a match penalty and accompanying five game suspension. Both teams were fined. Meanwhile Crowder suffered a serious, career-threatening concussion that required hospitalization and Kentucky's Christian Gosselin has a concussion as well, compliments of Parker. And the players weren't even the most juvenile people involved in this one - Kentucky PR director Tim Woodburn deliberately misspelled Hershey coach Mike Foligno's name into an insult in the game writeup. Turnstiles: The AHL started off the season with the second best opening weekend in the league's history. That's the good news. The bad news is that a few teams, most notably Kentucky, opened with record setting crowds, which means that other teams...well...New team Lowell opened strong, as did defending champs Philadelphia and the troubled Albany River Rats. The Wolfpack drew five figures to their opener and Worcester came close. But Hamilton, Providence and Syracuse were disappointing. Second week openers were better, as Rochester set a new attendance record with 10,319 at the opening of the newly renovated War Memorial and Hershey tied their opening night record with 7,075 in attendance. Bonus Babies: The AHL's opening rosters (the rosters effective October 9th) looked pretty good in terms of the draft picks placed on them. 34 first rounders and 45 second rounders graced opening night, a new record for the league. Saint John featured the most top picks, with eight. The rest: Team 1st 2nd Tot. Adirondack 2 2 4 Albany 0 4 4 Cincinnati 1 2 3 Fredericton 0 2 2 Hamilton 4 3 7 Hartford 3 4 7 Hershey 2 1 3 Kentucky 0 2 2 Lowell 1 2 3 New Haven 2 1 3 Philadelphia 2 3 5 Portland 3 2 5 Providence 2 1 3 Rochester 1 3 4 Saint John 3 5 8 Springfield 2 1 3 St. John's 3 3 6 Syracuse 2 2 4 Worcester 0 2 2 Totals 34 45 79 Forever Young: Some teams are really rookie-heavy this season, but the Syracuse Crunch are ridiculous. Syracuse has so many rookies, 19-year-old Robert Dome has more professional playing experience than 75% of his teammates. Ouch. There are 15 true rookies on the Crunch, plus three players who have played professionally before this year but below the AHL level. Only six players on the team have more than one years' experience playing at a high level of hockey. The average age on the team is 21 years, four months - 19 months below the league average.
Speaking of which, that's 22 years, 11 months for the whole league, the youngest in AHL history. The second youngest team is the Beast of New Haven at 22 years even; the old farts of the league are the Hartford Wolfpack at 24 years, nine months, followed by Rochester at 24 years, four months. Franchising: One of the first things to shake loose from the Penguins' Chapter 11 filing is the long dormant Cornwall Aces franchise. As you may recall, the Penguins bought the franchise rights, spent several years looking for a place to put it, then bought an expansion team in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA, which will start up next season. That left the dormant franchise, well, still dormant. As part of the early stages of restructuring of the Pens, the Wilkes-Barre team will remain property of the Penguins, while the Cornwall franchise is now exclusive property of original Pens owner Howard Baldwin. And it still isn't going anywhere. The franchise that may be going somewhere, most likely pending some vague resemblance of recovery for the Canadian dollar, is the equally dormant Prince Edward Island franchise. The Ottawa Senators still own it and are presently exploring the possibility of landing it in Quebec City, the same place that just lost another team, the IHL's Rafales. Given that QC seems to be poison for hockey teams these days and Ottawa's lack of both cash and players, don't hold your breath on that one. Stuff: Hartford goaltender JF Labbe passed the century mark in career wins and moved into the AHL's all-time top ten in wins... The only one of the AHL's five rookie coaches to win his coaching debut was Providence's Peter Laviolette. However, Kentucky's Roy Sommer managed to get through his first three games without losing at all... The P-Bruins' Tim Sweeney, who was the second leading scorer in club history and had a pretty decent year in New York last season, announced he was retiring after just two games... For trivia purposes, the first goalscorer in the history of the Lowell Lock Monsters is Mark Lawrence. The first winning goaltender is Marcel Cousineau... The Pirates' J.P. Dumont made his professional debut against Lowell - playing against the player he was traded for, Dmitri Nabokov... St. John's scored seven goals in their opening game. They only managed that many goals once all of last season... The Phantoms' Shawn McCosh had a hat trick on opening night... Dennis Maxwell scored for St. John's against Fredericton on Oct. 13 with just 28 seconds left in regulation, sending the game into OT where the Leafs won on a Ladislav Kohn goal... Worcester's Shane Toporowski was suspended for two games by the league for an attempt to injure penalty... An Oct. 16 game between Fredericton and St. John's featured seven goals, five of them from the Canadiens, and four fights - in the first period. The final was 8-4 Fredericton, as Terry Ryan had two goals and two assists... Kentucky blew another lead in the third period, this time allowing Albany three goals in the last ten minutes to lose 4-2 Oct. 16... Chris Ferraro set up four goals to keep Hamilton ahead of Cincinnati, 7-3, the same night... Rochester scored five goals in the first ten minutes against Hershey in their home opener. Scott Nichol had three points and Martin Biron faced only 17 shots, stopping 15... The Hartford Wolfpack scored twice unassisted in the last minutes of their game with Springfield Oct. 17 to win 3-1. Springfield's Sylvain Daigle still stopped 37 shots... Saint John's Eric Landry scored a pair en route to the Flames' 3-1 win over Syracuse Oct. 17... Steve Guolla picked up where he left off last season, picking two goals and an assist against Albany Oct. 17. Albany, however got two goals out of defenseman Ken Sutton... Benoit Gratton scored a pair for the Pirates against Adirondack Oct. 17, but Portland still lost again... For that matter, Hershey hasn't won a game yet and that's the first time in seventeen years the Bears couldn't pick up a win in their first five games... Lowell took a two goal lead on New Haven and then allowed the Beast five unanswered goals to lose, 5-2... Worcester played the first half of their Oct. 17 matchup against Hershey without a backup goaltender. Scott Roche, recalled from Peoria the same day, was at the airport waiting for his luggage to be found... Syracuse rookie netminder Mike Valley turned away St. John's Lonny Bohonos on a penalty shot Oct. 20, but that was the only time Bohonos was stopped as he was involved in three of the Leafs' five goals... Syracuse's other rookie goaltender, Craig Hillier, broke out of the gate 1-1-1 with 1.31 GAA and a .953 save percentage... Beast of New Haven rookie Shane Willis leads AHL rookies in points, with 11... Saint John youngster Chris Clark is leading the AHL in assists, having posted nine to date. He also leads the Flames in plus/minus, but hasn't scored a goal yet... In Fredericton, rookie goaltender Mathieu Garon briefly led the league in minutes played and is still just off the pace...
The WolfPack's Marc Savard and Derek Armstrong have yet to play a game without getting at least a point.... Hartford has the AHL's best goal differential at the start of the season at +11... New Haven's power play success rate is already at 30.6%, and they lead the league in extra man scoring with 15... Providence has been outscored 12-2 in the first period and outscored their opponents 7-3 the rest of the way in their first few games... The IceCats presently hold the league's best shot differential, at +48... The Hershey Bears led the AHL in power play goals last season with 106 and topped the AHL the season before too. This season, they've scored exactly one... Remember that amazing Phantoms offense? The defending champs have already managed to go 103 minutes plus with scoring a goal... Adirondack is already averaging 17.3 more penalty minutes a game than at this time last year. Better start practicing the penalty kill... Speaking of which, Albany River Rat Colin White is averaging 12 penalty minutes a game. That would be 960 for the season if he keeps it up... Bulldog Chris Ferraro set the club mark with five assists in a game October 16... Syracuse Crunch scored three power play goals in the first period and went four for seven overall with the extra man against St. John's Oct. 21... Portland goaltender Mike Rosati stopped 57 of 60 Albany shots Oct. 21 for the Pirates' first win of the season. Of the three goals the Rats did get past him, one was on a shorthanded, four-on-one break... Albany's Steve Brule scored that goal and became the Rats' all-time goal scoring leader in the same game, scoring two goals to bring him to 214... Marcel Cousineau picked up his first shutout for Lowell, stopping 23 Cincinnati shots while Mike Kennedy scored twice... Jean-Sebastian Giguere stopped 33 of 34 shots from the baby Leafs as they played to a 1-1 tie Oct. 23. The only guy to get a puck past him? Jason Podollan, of course... Giguere leads the league in GAA with a 1.22 and hasn't lost a game yet... Sergei Klimentiev and Peter White both had three point nights while pouring it on the hapless Bears 6-2 on Oct. 23. The Phantoms also set a team record for power play goals in a game, with five... Former Pirate Jim Carey had 33 saves against his old team Oct. 23 for a 3-1 win... Fredrik Lindquist had two goals and an assist for Hamilton as they took down Adirondack Oct. 23, 5-2... Rochester's Mike Harder had a hand in all three Amerks goals against Kentucky Oct. 23, setting up the first two and scoring an empty netter at the end...
If Worcester and Springfield are playing, it's gonna be wild. The Icecats were down 4-2 in the third but came back to tie it, then the teams twice traded goals before settling for a 6-6 tie Oct. 23. Worcester's Derek Bekar scored twice and Springfield's Greg Phillips had a hat trick... New Haven lost in Hartford...again... Syracuse came back from a 3-0 deficit to tie Lowell Oct. 23, then gave one up to Dane Jackson with 27 seconds left in regulation to lose. Warren Luhning had two goals, Dane Jackson scored the game winner and Crunch goalie Tim Keyes saw just 13 shots - and stopped only nine of them... Mike Fountain made 47 saves as New Haven topped Worcester 3-2 Oct. 24. Craig Ferguson scored two of the Beast goals... Lowell blueliner Mike Gaul scored a pair against Providence Oct. 24, the third straight win for the Lock Monsters... Hamilton and Fredericton were tied 3-3 at the 19:43 mark of the third period Oct. 25. Hamilton won, 5-3. Joe Hulbig and Chris Ferraro both scored in the final seconds. Ferraro was making up for missing on a penalty shot against Mathieu Garon earlier in the game... Philadelphia's Peter White scored two goals, one shorthanded and the other the game-winner, against Kentucky Oct. 25... Think the goaltenders are doing well so far this season? You're right. Last year the best GAA was Rich Shulmistra's 2.31. There are 12 goaltenders ahead of that already and six have GAAs under two... On October 25, 1998, for the first time in a long time in the AHL, every road team lost... As a whole, home ice isn't meaning much this year. Road teams have a 49.2% win percentage, in other words, a statistically negligible number... Syracuse's Valentin Morozov is third in the AHL in scoring with 12 points, and like the rest of the guys on the leader boards, he's a rookie... The Hartford WolfPack became the last AHL team to lose a game, finally dropping one to Albany Oct. 24... For the record: Hartford has yet to beat Albany ever. The Rats are 3-0-2 against the Pack... Providence and Kentucky are each averaging 41.5 penalty minutes a game... Providence isn't having any luck when they're not shorthanded either. They've scored just 15 goals all season and only four on the road... Reed Low has scored three goals for the IceCats so far. That wouldn't be strange, except that last season he needed the whole year to score one... Lowell's Marcel Cousineau leads the AHL in wins (5) and minutes (360) and is third in saves (141)... The second worst penalty killers in the league are the Portland Pirates, killing off only 68.9% and they have allowed 14 power play goals, worst in the league... Saint John's Eric Landry is second in goalscoring with seven and fourth in overall scoring with 11 points. Teammate Chris O'Sullivan lead the league in defense scoring, with nine points... The top two scorers in the AHL are both on The Rock. St. John's Jason Podollan and Ladislav Kohn rank first and second with 14 points and 13 points, respectively. They are also 1-2 in goalscoring... The Hamilton Bulldogs are now 4-0 with Fredrik Lindquist in the lineup. Lindquist is in the top five for scoring and goals... Rochester and Philadelphia have each allowed only 13 goals in their first six games...
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