Patrick WilliamsTheAHL.com Features Writer
Are the Calgary Wranglers back? It certainly seems so.
Playing in Stockton in 2021-22, the Calgary Flames advanced to the AHL's Western Conference Finals. In the Wranglers' inaugural 2022-23 season, the team finished atop the standings. But they fell to 35-28-6-3 last season, good for seventh in the Pacific Division.
Now, in spite of everything, he is a goalkeeper Dustin Wolf After graduating from the Flames and much more spread throughout hockey, the Wranglers are back to their winning ways. After a season-opening loss to Abbotsford, the Wranglers have won eight in a row and already sit six points ahead of the Pacific group.
Wolff, who had collected numerous awards in his three seasons in the AHL, provided a consistent goal for his teammates. With the 23-year-old now firmly in the NHL crease, the Wranglers turned to the NHL. Devin Cooley with that honesty. After making 42 saves in last night's 4-3 win over San Diego, Cooley is 6-1-0 with a 1.82 goals-against average and .946 save percentage through his first seven appearances this season. Calgary management signed Cooley on the first day of free agency this past July, bringing him to the organization on a two-year contract.
A fifth-year prospect out of the University of Denver, Cooley helped the Milwaukee Admirals reach the conference finals in 2023, and a trade deadline deal last March that sent him to the San Jose Sharks allowed him to play his first six NHL games — and he did so near his hometown of Los Gatos, Calif. .
Cooley's fast start with Calgary already includes four outings where he stopped 37 or more shots. After the opening weekend home series with Abbotsford, Cooley delivered a 44-save afternoon in his first win for the Wranglers. Then on a trip through the Coachella Valley, Henderson and Bakersfield, he stopped 98 of 100 shots he faced. This past weekend when Colorado visited for a few games, he split the job with an interesting young man Walter Ignatjewthe 24-year-old Helsinki native was voted the best goaltender in Sweden's second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan last season.
In his second season behind the Wranglers bench, he is the head coach Trent Cull he thinks getting off a week-long road trip early might be helpful down the road.
“It [was] it's good to get together on the road for a while,” Cull told reporters after Sunday afternoon's home win over Colorado. “Shut up some outside noise, start playing our game, and get that back.”
Ask any AHL head coach, and strong early season goaltending is key. Like any of the 32 teams in this league, the Wranglers are trying to work with new faces on their roster. It takes time for those players to adjust, for the systems to become secondary, and for the team to begin to shape the kind of identity they want. Strong goaltending buys something for that process to play out effectively, something Cull knows well.
“I think we're doing a lot of things well that we talked about,” said Cull. “The team deserves a lot of credit. They got the idea of how we want to play, and they did it quickly.”
One of Calgary's most notable new faces is on the way Martin FrkThe former 40-goal scorer got on the board for the first time this season on Sunday.
“It was just a matter of time,” Cull said with a smile.
Frk, who won the Calder Cup with Grand Rapids in 2017, can get hot quickly: in 2022-23 with Springfield he managed one goal in his first 11 games before finishing with 30 points on the year.
Forward Rory Kerins (8-2-10), Jakob Pelletier (0-10-10), Walker Duehr (5-4-9), Clark Bishop (5-3-8) and The Dryden Hunt (1-7-8) all rank among the AHL's leading scorers this season. Kerins' league-high eight goals have already been shared in all previous seasons. Pelletier has returned to form following a disrupted 2023-24 season. And Duehr brings his power play back to the Wranglers after playing 40 games last season with the Flames.
The AHL club also received Matt Coronato back last week. A 2021 first-round draft pick and AHL All-Star as a rookie last season, Coronato scored two goals in last night's win.
On defense, the returners Jonathan Aspirot, Ilya Solovyov, Yan Kuznetsov, Artem Grushnikov again Jeremy Poirier they are combined Jarred Tinordia late summer signing who brings more than 200 games of NHL experience to the blue line.
The Wranglers have played a league-high nine games in 19 days of the season, but Cooley is fine with that.
“You have to look [the schedule] and you're like, 'Okay, just one big game,'” Cooley told reporters Sunday. “When you play one game…it's the same [the result] It doesn't really matter because you have to play the next one in a few days. You can't let your foot off the gas. I'm trying to see this season as one big game, and I'm really excited to get back out there again.”
In the American Hockey League for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams and currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor to SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL's James H. Ellery Memorial Award for the league's top scorer in 2016.
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