AHL Shuffle: 02/10/22
Martin St. Louis will be behind the bench for the first time when the Montreal Canadiens take on the Washington Capitals tonight, making his debut as an NHL head coach. If he can take the Canadiens to a win, it will be just their ninth of the season, and would snap a seven-game losing streak. While Montreal and the rest of the league prepare for action, we’ll keep track of all the minor league shuffling.
Atlantic Division
- The Boston Bruins have recalled Jack Studnicka and Tyler Lewington from the Providence Bruins after losing Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron this week. To make some room, Oskar Steen has been sent to the minor leagues as Studnicka can fill in a center spot. Erik Haula will be between Taylor Hall and David Pastrnak on the top line.
Metropolitan Division
Central Division
- The Winnipeg Jets have sent Declan Chisholm to the minor leagues, as Logan Stanley is expected to travel with the team and soon make his return to the lineup. Chisholm, 22, has played in two games for the Jets this season but will return to Manitoba, where he’s suited up 31 times.
Pacific Division
This page will be updated throughout the day.
Filip Hronek Placed In COVID Protocol
Even though testing has been reduced, it doesn’t mean the COVID list is completely eliminated. The Detroit Red Wings have placed Filip Hronek in COVID protocol, making him unavailable to the team for the time being.
Hronek, 24, is perhaps one of the underrated success stories of Red Wings development over the last few years and a bigger part of their future than some may realize. The young defenseman has been logging more than 22 minutes a night since the start of the 2019-20 season and is on pace to break his career-high with 24 points through 46 games so far. A second-round pick in 2016, he signed a new three-year, $13.2MM contract in September that made him one of the few Red Wings players signed to one-way contracts through the 2023-24 season (Robby Fabbri, Michael Rasmussen, and Jakub Vrana are the others).
Should he miss a few games–and his spot in the COVID protocol suggests he has a confirmed case and is experiencing symptoms–the Red Wings could lean even more heavily on young Moritz Seider, who is already racking up minutes and points in his rookie season. Gustav Lindstrom, another young defenseman could receive a bump in playing time as well as the team continues through their developmental season.
The Red Wings are now 21-21-6 after a 6-3 win in Philadelphia last night but the playoffs are still quite a distance away.
Edmonton Oilers Fire Dave Tippett
The Edmonton Oilers have had enough, and Ken Holland has finally fired a coach. Dave Tippett is out, according to Darren Dreger of TSN, after another embarrassing loss last night. The Oilers managed 41 shots but fell 4-1 to the Chicago Blackhawks, allowing early powerplay goals in both the first and third periods. Dreger adds that Jim Playfair has also been fired, while Jay Woodcroft and Dave Manson from the Bakersfield Condors will take over as head coach and assistant respectively. In a release that followed, the team confirmed the dismissal of Tippett and Playfair, adding that assistants Glen Gulutzan and Brian Wiseman will remain with the team.
Tippett, 60, was in his third year as head coach of Edmonton and had thus far put up a 95-62-14 record. While that doesn’t look bad overall, the 23-18-3 mark this season just hasn’t been good enough for a team led by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. The team has struggled to defend, has had a carousel of inconsistency in net, and still doesn’t have the secondary scoring required to contend for the Stanley Cup. While a lot of that is due to poor roster construction, Tippett will pay the price after some of his deployment concerns.
Mike Smith started both ends of a back-to-back over the last two days, despite him just coming back off an injury recently. He lost both, allowing four goals in each, and now has an .890 save percentage on the season. Smith has been connected to Tippett for years, and hasn’t been able to play to the level he showed last season.
Notably, the veteran coach’s contract expired at the end of the season anyway, one that was unlikely to be renewed given the way the Oilers have performed this year.
Woodcroft comes in as a fresh face, having never been a head coach at the NHL level. He has been in charge of the Condors since 2018 and previously served as an assistant with the Oilers and Sharks, but those aren’t the most interesting assignments on his resume. It’s the years he spent with the Detroit Red Wings that stick out here given he’s now being promoted by Holland. Woodcroft was a video coach with the Red Wings right after his playing career came to an end, and comes from that coaching tree that spawned Todd McLellan, who eventually brought him to San Jose and then Edmonton.
This is the first time that Holland has fired a coach in the NHL, something he has been vehemently against in the past. At a press conference earlier this year, he suggested that dismissing Tippett wouldn’t be the answer and that the Oilers couldn’t “keep whipping through coaches” to try and solve the problem. Well, they are now on the seventh coach since the 2012-13 lockout, as Woodcroft will follow Tippett, Ken Hitchcock, McLellan, Todd Nelson, Dallas Eakins, and Ralph Krueger trying to get the best out of a frustrating lineup.
St. Louis Blues Extend Craig Berube
One St. Louis becomes a coach, another St. Louis extends one. The St. Louis Blues have signed Craig Berube to a three-year extension, taking him through the 2024-25 season. The Blues coach released a short statement on why he chose to stay:
I’ve enjoyed working with (General Manager) Doug Armstrong and (Chairman) Tom Stillman, working with the coaching staff and training staff and all the players we have here. Why would I want to go anywhere else? I love it here.
Berube, a veteran of more than 1,000 games as a player in the NHL, took over the Blues as head coach during the 2018-19 season and led them all the way to a Stanley Cup championship. When he replaced Mike Yeo, the team was 7-9-3 and floundering in the Central Division. They would go 38-19-6 after making the switch, climbing all the way from last place in the NHL to second in the Central, then dispatching the Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars, San Jose Sharks, and Boston Bruins en route to the organization’s first Stanley Cup.
Signed to an extension after that year ended, Berube was in the final season of his deal and would have become a free agent without another contract in place. He now has some security and can continue what has been an outstanding job behind the Blues’ bench. In 234 games as head coach of the Blues, he has a 133-71-30 record in the regular season.
Interestingly enough though, Berube’s recent postseason record hasn’t been very good. The Blues were washed out of the first round in six games in 2020 by the Vancouver Canucks, and then swept by the Colorado Avalanche last summer. This year, should they make it again, will be a big test for the group that was so physically dominant in the 2019 playoffs, punishing any opponent that stood in their way. St. Louis currently sits fourth in the Central but securely in the first wild card position.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Montreal Canadiens Hire Martin St. Louis As Interim Head Coach
The Montreal Canadiens have gone a bit off the board to replace Dominique Ducharme, who was fired earlier today. Instead of going with someone that already has coaching experience at the NHL level, the team has instead hired Hockey Hall of Fame player Martin St. Louis as interim head coach. General manager Kent Hughes has released the following statement:
We are very happy to welcome Martin to the Canadiens organization. Not only are we adding an excellent hockey man, but with Martin we are bringing in a proven winner and a man whose competitive qualities are recognized by all who have crossed his path.
St. Louis, 46, has no formal experience as a coach in the NHL, though he did serve as a powerplay consultant for the Columbus Blue Jackets for part of the 2018-19 season.
Still, there’s no one doubting his hockey knowledge. St. Louis played 1,134 regular season games over a long NHL career, scoring 1,033 points. He added another 107 playoff contests, winning the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004. Olympic gold. World Cup gold. Art Ross and Hart trophies. There’s very little that St. Louis failed to accomplish as a player, despite going undrafted as an undersized forward in a league that was still focused on size.
There are also many obvious connections with the new Montreal front office. Not only did St. Louis play for Jeff Gorton when he was still in the front office of the New York Rangers, but their kids also played youth hockey together. St. Louis’ son Ryan now plays at Northeastern with Jack and Riley Hughes, sons of the Montreal GM. Hughes was also the agent for Vincent Lecavalier, a longtime teammate of St. Louis in Tampa Bay. Lecavalier has also been linked to the Canadiens organization in recent days, though the role he would take on is not clear.
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports that St. Louis is only signed through the end of this season and the two sides will talk about the future at the end of that short tenure. With the Canadiens completely floundering and at the bottom of the standings, it’s hard to expect St. Louis to really turn around the program. If he can get at least some sort of change out of the group, however, perhaps he’ll make the jump right from peewee head coach to NHL head coach on a full-time basis.
Montreal Canadiens Fire Dominique Ducharme
The new front office leadership of the Montreal Canadiens has made their first big move. Dominique Ducharme has been relieved of his duties as head coach, effective immediately. His replacement will be named later today according to the team and the status of the assistant coaches has not been changed. Kent Hughes, Montreal’s new GM, released a statement:
We would like to sincerely thank Dominique for his work and contributions to the Montreal Canadiens organization. At this point in the season, we felt it was in the best interest of the club to make a change.
Ducharme, 48, took over as head coach of the Canadiens in February of last year when Claude Julien was let go and ended up leading the team all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals. Even during that run there were questions about whether he was the right person to continue leading the Canadiens, but the interim tag was eventually removed and Ducharme signed a three-year contract extension in July. That deal keeps him under contract through the 2023-24 season but he will no longer be behind the Canadiens bench as Hughes and Jeff Gorton start to put their stamp on the team.
It’s been a disastrous year for Montreal, with the leadership group in tatters after Shea Weber and Carey Price were sidelined by injury and players like Phillip Danault were lost to free agency. The team has cratered in the standings and on the ice, with some players even showing a lack of effort at times. The Canadiens are 8-30-7 on the season and were embarrassed by the New Jersey Devils last night, losing 7-1 on home ice. The final goal last night was scored by Tomas Tatar, notably a player that was scratched in the playoffs by Ducharme last year.
If the Canadiens hire someone else to take over as head coach right away, they would actually be paying three people for that job. Julien’s contract, which carried a $5MM salary, is still on the books for this season. That, plus the $1.7MM that Ducharme is believed to earn, is certainly not an insignificant amount to a team that has also dealt with attendance restrictions this season and will continue to do so for the next few weeks.
Interestingly enough, Gorton–who was given the role of executive vice president of hockey operations after Marc Bergevin was let go–actually told reporters earlier this season that he would not be making a coaching change until the summer. That plan has obviously changed with Hughes’ addition and the continued losses piling up in Montreal.
The Canadiens have a big offseason ahead of them that includes hosting the draft where they currently hold 11 selections. That number could grow as the trade deadline approaches, though there aren’t a ton of expiring contracts on the books. Whoever does take over as head coach will certainly not be able to bring the team back from the hole they’ve dug themselves, meaning it could very well be an interim position for the rest of this season.
Jean-Charles Lajoie of TVA Sports was to report that Ducharme had been fired.
Snapshots: Halak, Almari, Crouse
The Vancouver Canucks have confirmed that Jaroslav Halak will start this evening against the New York Islanders, meaning a $1.25MM performance bonus will be triggered for playing in his tenth game of the season. In normal circumstances that wouldn’t be much of a concern but the Canucks are one of the many teams using long-term injured reserve this season to put together their current roster. If they can’t fit that $1.25MM in by the end of the season, whatever is left would be carried over to next season.
In fact, Halak has another potential bonus of $250K should he end the year with a save percentage over .905. He’s currently at .918 through his first nine appearances, meaning he would need some tough performances over the last few months to get it down below that threshold.
- The Pittsburgh Penguins have decided to loan Niclas Almari to Finland, after he failed to really catch on in the minor leagues. Almari, 23, was a fifth-round pick in 2016 that signed his entry-level contract in 2019, playing 51 games for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in 2019-20. This year though, his time has been split between WBS and the Wheeling Nailers, not seeing regular ice time at either stop. With the entry-level deal expiring at the end of the season, Almari is a prime candidate to go unqualified and become an unrestricted free agent.
- One of the Arizona Coyotes players that was thrown around in trade rumors earlier this season was Lawson Crouse, given his strong performance on the rebuilding club. Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports, one of the most plugged-in Coyotes reporters around, threw some cold water on any Crouse discussion when he replied “he’s not being traded” on Twitter today. Crouse, 24, will be a restricted free agent at the end of the season and is arbitration-eligible.
Seattle Kraken Claim Dennis Cholowski
As expected, the Seattle Kraken have reclaimed Dennis Cholowski off waivers from the Washington Capitals according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. The young defenseman had been lost at the beginning of the season without ever actually suiting up for Seattle.
Cholowski, 23, ended up playing in just seven games for the Capitals during his time in Washington, spending more time in the press box than in the lineup. That’s sort of been the story of his career the last few years, as the first-round pick has played just 59 NHL games since the start of 2019-20. That is only a few more than he had as a rookie in 2018-19 when he came almost directly to the Detroit Red Wings lineup in his first year of professional hockey.
It was from Detroit that Cholowski was originally selected by the Kraken in the expansion draft. He ended up on waivers at the beginning of the season though thanks to an overloaded defense corps and ended up heading east. His return to the Kraken depth chart is an interesting one, given where the team now sits in the standings. With the trade deadline approaching, there could be some opportunities for the Seattle front office to flip some of their more veteran defensemen, thus opening up an opportunity for someone like Cholowski.
Still, he’ll have to show more consistency than he has to this point if he wants to lock down a full-time NHL job. Because the Kraken were the only team to put in a claim this time around, he can be immediately assigned to the minor leagues. The team did so, sending him to the Charlotte Checkers, the AHL club they are sharing this season.
AHL Shuffle: 02/09/22
The NHL has six games on the docket for this evening, including a battle between the two worst teams in the Western Conference. The Seattle Kraken and Arizona Coyotes will do battle, with a win not really benefiting either one at this point. The expansion franchise is 15-27-4 in their first year, while the rebuilding Coyotes are 11-31-4. As they and others prepare, we’ll keep track of all the minor league shuffling.
Atlantic Division
- The Buffalo Sabres have assigned Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to the AHL, a good sign as he returns from injury. The young goaltender is still expected to play a part in the Sabres’ future, but for now needs to get his game back on track at the minor league level.
Metropolitan Division
- Because Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin is still not eligible to travel to Montreal due to his recent COVID status, Brett Leason has been recalled from the AHL. Leason, 22, has played in 33 games with the Capitals this season and has six points. Ovechkin will be able to rejoin the team for their game Sunday in Washington.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets have recalled Carson Meyer, a first for the young forward. An Ohio native who attended both Miami University and Ohio State, Meyer was a sixth-round pick in 2017 and has 12 points in 33 games for the Cleveland Monsters this season. Should he enter the lineup, it would be his NHL debut.
Central Division
- The Minnesota Wild have reassigned Mitchell Chaffee and Kevin Czuczman to the Iowa Wild again, now that they have a few days off. Minnesota won’t play again until Saturday when they welcome in Nino Niederreiter and the Carolina Hurricanes. Depending on injury statuses, there could be more recalls by then.
- The Colorado Avalanche have recalled Dylan Sikura once again, as Nathan MacKinnon still isn’t expected to be ready by tomorrow’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. That could change by Sunday’s afternoon tilt, but for now Sikura will once again fill in as an offensive piece.
Pacific Division
This page will be updated throughout the day
St. Louis Blues Extend Alexei Toropchenko
General manager Doug Armstrong and the St. Louis Blues front office are getting some work done ahead of the NHL trade deadline, handing out extensions to several pending free agents. After signing Robert Bortuzzo and Logan Brown yesterday, the Blues have inked Alexei Toropchenko to a one-year extension today. The two-way deal will carry an NHL salary of $750K and an AHL salary of $100K.
Toropchenko, 22, made his NHL debut this season and has suited up for five games with the Blues so far. The big winger was a fourth-round pick in 2017 and spent last season on loan to Kunlun Red Star of the KHL. While he’s never been much of a dynamic offensive player, his size, skating ability, and strength around the net can be difficult to contain.
The Blues obviously believe he can be a player for them and won’t have to deal with any restricted free agent negotiations this summer. Instead, he’ll come back on a league-minimum cap hit that should actually be an advantage for him when it comes to NHL playing time. If Toropchenko can prove he belongs on a full-time basis, having a $750K contract in the lineup allows the team to keep spending elsewhere.
Notably, he’ll also be eligible for waivers next season, another indication that he could get some time with the big club to start the year. For now, Toropchenko is with the Springfield Thunderbirds where he has seven goals and 12 points in 32 games. Some more consistency at that level would go a long way to proving he’s ready for the next step.