New Jersey Devils Reassign Max Willman
According to the AHL’s official transactions wire, the New Jersey Devils have reassigned forward Max Willman to their AHL affiliate, the Utica Comets. In a corresponding move, the Comets have reassigned forward Erik Middendorf has been reassigned to the Devils organization’s ECHL affiliate, the Adirondack Thunder.
Willman is a 28-year-old center who signed a one-year, $775k contract with the Devils in the offseason. After his five-year collegiate career ended, Willman, a former Buffalo Sabres draft pick, began his pro career in the ECHL with the Reading Royals. He scored 25 points in just 20 games, earning a quick call-up to the AHL with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Willman would go on to establish himself as a regular player for the Phantoms over the next few years, even earning a total of 50 NHL games with the Philadelphia Flyers.
He was signed by the Devils over the summer to bolster the organization’s forward depth, and he has played a heightened role for the Comets than what he normally received with Lehigh Valley. He’s responded to getting first-line minutes with production, as he’s posted seven points in seven games.
The Devils rewarded his hot start with an NHL call-up, and he played in two games for the club. He played 11-12 minutes in each contest and even scored a goal against the Chicago Blackhawks before settling in as a healthy scratch.
With the Devils optimistic that Colin Miller will be able to return to the lineup on their two-game road trip, sending down Willman clears a spot on the Devils’ roster that can go to Miller when he is able to be activated off of injured reserve.
With Willman back on Utica’s roster, Middendorf was returned to Adirondack. The 23-year-old former Michigan State Spartan is in his first full season as a professional player, and he has gotten off to a good start for the Thunder. He’s scored three goals and four points in five games, and was rewarded with an AHL call-up. He registered one shot on goal during the Comets’ loss against the Rochester Americans on November 10th, and now he’ll return to the Thunder having gotten a taste of AHL hockey.
Colorado Avalanche Sign Joel Kiviranta
The Colorado Avalanche have signed forward Joel Kiviranta to a one-year, two-way $775k contract, according to a team announcement.
Kiviranta originally began the season on a PTO with the Avalanche, spending training camp and preseason with the team. He then signed an AHL contract with the Colorado Eagles, and after a strong start there he’s earned a full NHL deal.
The 27-year-old Finnish winger has scored six points in 10 games for the Eagles so far this season, where he has played in a first-line role. This season has been Kiviranta’s second in the AHL, as he made his debut in North America with the Texas Stars in 2019-20.
For the last three seasons, Kiviranta has exclusively played in the NHL with the Dallas Stars. He struggled to make an impact in 2022-23, scoring eight goals and nine points in 70 games.
Kiviranta is perhaps best known for his playoff exploits, something Avalanche fans are all too familiar with. He scored five points in 15 games on the Stars’ run to the Western Conference Finals last season. He also made headlines in the 2019-20 playoffs when he, as a rookie, scored a hat trick in Game Seven against the Avalanche, eliminating them from the Western Conference Semifinals in overtime.
Now, Kiviranta finds himself on the other side of things as a key AHL contributor for the Eagles. Now that he’s signed this NHL deal, he’ll have a chance to play in the NHL this season in Colorado.
Seattle Kraken Reassign Devin Shore
The Seattle Kraken have reassigned forward Devin Shore to their AHL affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
Forward Brandon Tanev, who has been out with an injury since October 10th, was a full participant in practice today in Seattle. In order to activate him and return him to coach Dave Hakstol’s lineup, the team needed to clear a roster spot, so Shore is headed to the AHL.
Shore has been with the Kraken since October and played in the team’s game last night against the Edmonton Oilers. A veteran bottom-six center, Shore has 431 career NHL games on his resume. He scored one goal and two points with the Kraken this season, skating in a total of nine games.
He spent last season as a depth forward for the Oilers, scoring nine points in 47 games. Shore hasn’t been a full-time AHLer ever in his career, so it’s likely that he’ll find his way back to the Kraken roster at some point this season.
Montreal Canadiens Recall Gustav Lindström, Loan Joel Armia To AHL
The Montreal Canadiens have recalled defenseman Gustav Lindström, according to a team announcement. In a corresponding move, the Canadiens loaned Joel Armia to their AHL affiliate, the Laval Rocket.
The rationale behind these two roster moves is quite clear. The Canadiens were carrying only six defensemen, in large part thanks to the fact that they are carrying three goalies on their 23-man roster.
With defenseman Jordan Harris dealing with an injury and currently a game-time decision for tonight’s contest against the Vancouver Canucks, the Canadiens needed an extra defenseman on their roster to provide security in case Harris can’t play.
With David Savard injured, the state of the Canadiens’ defensive depth chart leaves Lindström as the team’s seventh defenseman. So the veteran has been elevated to the NHL roster, leaving the Rocket just before their game against the Manitoba Moose.
In order to recall Lindström the Canadiens needed to clear room on their roster, and to do so they’ve sent Armia to the AHL. Armia, who cleared waivers earlier this season, was a healthy scratch for the Canadiens’ win last night over the Boston Bruins. With four goals and five points for the Rocket this season, he’d be a major addition to the Laval lineup should he dress for any games.
Edmonton Oilers Fire Jay Woodcroft, Hire Kris Knoblauch
Despite a convincing victory last night, the Edmonton Oilers are making a surprising coaching move. They are expected to relieve head coach Jay Woodcroft of his duties, according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. According to Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, Hartford Wolf Pack head coach Kris Knoblauch will be named the next Oilers head coach.
The Oilers have now officially announced the moves, alongside one more change: Dave Manson is out as an assistant coach for the team, and legendary former Oilers blueliner Paul Coffey has been hired as an assistant coach in Manson’s place. Coffey was previously a senior advisor to the club.
A Zach Hyman hat trick lifted the Edmonton Oilers to a 4-1 win over the Seattle Kraken last night, though the team still sits second to last in the NHL with a 3-9-1 record. In a Stanley Cup-or-bust season, The Oilers atrociously bad start to the season—highlighted by the team’s dispiriting loss to fellow basement-dwellers, the San Jose Sharks— has now cost Woodcroft his job.
Per the Edmonton Sun’s Terry Jones, this move will be the fifth head coaching change of the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl partnership. Of all the coaches to man the bench for McDavid and Draisaitl, its Woodcroft who has arguably had the most success.
Woodcroft rose from Bakersfield Condors bench boss to the big job in Edmonton, and posted a .643 points percentage across 133 games. That’s the highest in Oilers history, above even the .616 mark posted by legendary coach Glen Sather.
Woodcroft took the Oilers to the Western Conference Final in 2022, where they would fall to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche. He lost to the eventual champions once again in 2023, dropping a hard-fought battle with the Vegas Golden Knights.
But with their season on life support, the Oilers needed to make changes in order to resurrect their Stanley Cup hopes. With no cap space to make trades, the easiest path to major change in Edmonton was via a coaching change, and the Oilers have now taken that route.
This is an attractive job due to the presence of the best player in the world on their roster, but there are some issues here. After this season, Draisaitl will have just one year remaining on his contract. If the Oilers fall well short of the playoffs this season, Draisaitl could reasonably question whether he’ll be able to win a Stanley Cup in Edmonton should he commit what is likely to be the rest of his prime years to the franchise.
McDavid has an extra year on his contract, so there will naturally be questions regarding his future as well, though the hire of his former agent Jeff Jackson as the team’s CEO of hockey operations position makes it more likely he’ll eventually reach a deal on a contract extension.
Those questions are all for the offseason and beyond, though. The Oilers have a more immediate problem to wrestle with: how are they going to revive their playoff chances in a season where they were viewed by many as a true Stanley Cup contender? Now with Woodcroft out, it appears the Oilers believe the first step to answering that question is a coaching change.
The choice of the next Oilers coach appears to be at least somewhat McDavid-oriented. Knoblauch was McDavid’s coach in the OHL with the Erie Otters, and he won an OHL title with the team in 2016-17. A two-time championship-winning coach in the CHL, Knoblauch, 45, is in his fifth season as the bench boss of the Wolf Pack.
He led the team on a run to the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs last season, upsetting the favored Providence Bruins along the way. He leaves Hartford this season with a 7-3-1 record.
The New York Post’s Mollie Walker reports that Wolf Pack assistant coach Steve Smith will take up head coaching duties in the immediate term, although the search for the team’s next head coach will “begin immediately.” Smith is actually a former Oilers coach himself, having served as an assistant on three separate coaching staffs from 2010 to 2014.
Knoblauch hasn’t been an NHL head coach before, save for a short stint during the pandemic when health-related absences put him behind the Rangers’ bench due to necessity. But despite his lack of NHL experience, he was viewed as a contender for the Rangers’ vacancy before they hired Peter Laviolette. Now, he gets his first shot behind an NHL bench with some former players on his roster and an immediate, pressing task ahead: save the Oilers season.
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Winnipeg Jets Assign Declan Chisholm To AHL On Conditioning Basis
Winnipeg Jets defenseman Declan Chisholm has been loaned to the team’s AHL affiliate, the Manitoba Moose, for conditioning purposes. The move will put Chisholm in a position to make his 2023-24 debut, having exclusively played in the preseason to this point.
Chisholm, 23, starred for the Moose last season scoring 43 points in 59 games. The 23-year-old is now waiver-eligible, meaning the Jets would have to risk exposing him to 31 other teams in order to have him return to the Moose on an outright assignment.
So instead, they will assign him to Manitoba on a conditioning basis (as they are allowed to due to how little he’s played in the AHL) with the assignment likely to last for two weeks at maximum.
According to the Winnipeg Free Press’ Mike McIntyre, Chisholm’s “only immediate path to playing time” in Winnipeg “is an unfortunate injury or two,” given the Jets’ depth at the defensive position. Chisholm has maintained a positive outlook on his situation, telling the media that despite not playing, “being a sponge” around the Jets players has helped his development.
He’ll surely be happy to get back into some games thanks to this assignment, though, just as the 4-4-0 Moose will be happy to have their best defenseman from last season back on their roster.
Carolina Hurricanes Reassign Three Prospects To AHL
There appears to be some thawing in tensions between the Carolina Hurricanes and the Chicago Wolves, their former AHL affiliate.
The Wolves made the highly unexpected choice to go it alone in the AHL, deciding to not have an NHL affiliate while the Hurricanes were left without an AHL franchise to partner with. As an independently-owned franchise that has historically prioritized Calder Cup contention above all else, there had been some tension between the Wolves and the Hurricanes, the latter of whom is likely to care more about the development of its prospects rather than Calder Cup contention.
Although the Wolves had signed some big-name veteran players such as Max Comtois, Rocco Grimaldi, Chris Terry, and Keith Kinkaid, they have struggled immensely so far this season. They currently have just one win, and their .222 points percentage ranks them last in the AHL, behind the 2-7-1 Laval Rocket.
The AHL’s development rule, which stipulates that most of a team’s lineup must be composed of players with under 260 professional games under their belt, poses an issue. Most players of quality who fit under those limits have been scooped up by NHL teams, so finding players un-affiliated with an NHL franchise that not only fit under those limits but also are up to the task of playing more than just depth roles in the AHL, is challenging.
It appears now that the Hurricanes and Wolves have found their way back to each other. Carolina team reporter Walt Ruff has reported that prospects Domenick Fensore, Griffin Mendel, and Ronan Seeley have been reassigned from the ECHL’s Norfolk Admirals to the Wolves. This comes just shortly after Vasily Ponomarev was reassigned to Chicago from the Tucson Roadrunners.
Fensore, 22, is a skilled offensive defenseman who has 10 points in nine games so far this season for the Admirals. The 2019 90th overall pick will likely take up an important offensive role for a Wolves team only really getting offensive production from one blueliner.
Seeley, 21, was a 2020 seventh-round pick who skated in 70 games for the Wolves last season, scoring 25 points. He’s likely to resume his role as a top-four defenseman in Chicago. Mendel, 24, is an undrafted former University of Denver and Quinnipiac University blueliner who offers imposing size at six-foot-six, 220 pounds. He played in 72 games for the Wolves last season, scoring 19 points, and will be a quality add for the Wolves.
Seeing as the Wolves seem to have prioritized forwards in their offseason signings of AHL veterans, it’s not a huge surprise that they’ve come to an agreement with the Hurricanes in order to get some valuable defensemen from their ECHL roster, including two with prior experience playing for Chicago.
For as much as each side of this now-shrinking divide between former affiliates may have believed they could go it alone, it appears the best path forward for both the Hurricanes (who likely don’t want to keep quality prospects in the ECHL) and the Wolves (whose early struggles indicate the necessity of an NHL affiliation) is to return to the sort of partnership that won Chicago a Calder Cup in 2022.
Sam Bennett To Return To Panthers Lineup
Florida Panthers forward Sam Bennett will return to the team’s lineup tonight, according to head coach Paul Maurice. Bennett has been limited to just one game and 7:54 TOI this season due to injury.
The 27-year-old center will shift into a third-line pivot role in Maurice’s lineup, pushing Kevin Stenlund to the fourth line. He’ll play in between Nick Cousins and Eetu Luostarinen, two players looking to increase their productivity this season as they combine for just four points.
Production hasn’t been an issue for Bennett since he arrived in Florida. After scoring 20 points in his first 15 games in Sunrise, Bennett scored 28 goals in 2021-22. Then he had 40 points in just 63 games last season, to go alongside 15 points in 20 postseason games.
The Panthers have survived their injury issues to start this season, and currently rank second in the Atlantic Division with a .654 points percentage. While there was some worry that the team would stumble after reaching the Stanley Cup Final earlier this year, it appears such worries were premature.
The return of Bennett for today’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks will only strengthen what is already a quality Panthers team.
Avalanche Issue Injury Updates, Recall Riley Tufte And Caleb Jones
11/12: Riley Tufte has been re-assigned to the Colorado Eagles of the AHL.
11/11: Colorado finds itself down a pair of forwards for tonight’s game against St. Louis as head coach Jared Bednar told reporters including NHL.com’s Ryan Boulding that forwards Artturi Lehkonen and Andrew Cogliano are both out of the lineup. Lehkonen is expected to miss several weeks with an upper-body injury while Cogliano is day-to-day with an undisclosed injury. In a corresponding move, the team announced (Twitter links) the recall of forward Riley Tufte and defenseman Caleb Jones from AHL Colorado.
Lehkonen suffered the injury after crashing head-first into the boards on Thursday against Seattle. That said, Bednar clarified that the upper-body issue that the 28-year-old has is not a head injury.
Last season, Lehkonen put up career highs across the board in his first full season with the Avs, notching 21 goals and 30 assists in 64 games while seeing his playing time surpass the 20-minute-a-night mark for the first time. His numbers are down a bit this year but he still has been an important part of their top six, picking up three goals and five helpers in a dozen contests while logging 18:30 per contest. There is no firm timeline for how long he will be out for.
As for Cogliano, the 36-year-old has been a regular on Colorado’s fourth line this season and is their second-most used forward on the penalty kill behind Logan O’Connor. He has three assists in 11 games so far after missing the season opener as he finished recovering from two fractured vertebrae in his neck that occurred during the playoffs last spring.
Jones, meanwhile, signed with Carolina during the offseason but after clearing waivers and being loaned to AHL Colorado, the Avs acquired his NHL rights last month. This will be his second recall of the season although he didn’t see any action during his first one. The 26-year-old has 213 career NHL appearances under his belt and has six assists in a dozen games with the Eagles so far this season.
The Avalanche had two open roster spots following Tufte’s paper demotion to the minors yesterday so no corresponding moves needed to be made to add him or Jones onto the active roster. Speculatively, Lehkonen will likely be heading for injured reserve at some point which would open up another spot on the roster.
Roman Čechmánek Passes Away at 52
Deník Sport has shared the passing of former Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Roman Čechmánek. The goaltender was 52 years old and had previously played 212 games in the NHL, after being drafted in the sixth round – 171st overall – in the 2000 NHL Draft. That was 34 spots before Henrik Lundqvist heard his name called by the New York Rangers.
Čechmánek was, interestingly, 29 years old when he was drafted. He also had seven years of professional hockey in Czcehia under his belt, helping to set him up for an immediate role in the NHL. Čechmánek made his NHL debut on October 17th after his draft day and would go on to play a dazzling 59 games with Philadelphia through his inaugural season – the 14th-most of any goalie that season. And Čechmánek was efficient in the performances, tallying a 35-15-6 record and .921 save percentage. While he was too old to be considered a rookie, he would have recorded the second-highest save percentage of any Flyers goalie in the modern era, only outperformed by Doug Favell‘s .931 set in the 1967-68 season. Čechmánek would go on to finish second in Vezina voting that season – his first in the NHL – losing out to Dominik Hašek for the award.
But he stayed consistent, recording a .921 save percentage again through 46 games in his sophomore season. His record also stayed green, with the then-30-year-old goalie going 24-13-6. And despite two tremendous years to start his career, it was Čechmánek’s third season in the league that would go down as his career best. Through 58 games, the netminder recorded a .925 save percentage and 33-15-10 record. He won the William M. Jennings award, provided to the goalie(s) that allowed the fewest goals against, but ranked seventh in Vezina voting in a year where Martin Brodeur, Marty Turco, and Ed Belfour topped the list.
Čechmánek would play one more NHL season after that, moving to the Los Angeles Kings and continuing to find success. But his NHL career drew to a close after one year in L.A., with the goaltender returning to Czechia and appearing in various European pro leagues before retiring in 2007-08. Interestingly, he recorded a career-high .948 save percentage in the 2006-07 season in Czechia’s top league. While he had a short NHL career, he was always someone to watch when he played. We at Pro Hockey Rumors extend our condolences to his family, friends and the Philadelphia/L.A. hockey community.