Rangers Fire Multiple AHL Coaches
After the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack finished last in the league this season, its parent club is making sweeping changes. The Rangers announced Sunday that head coach Grant Potulny, as well as assistants Paul Mara and Jamie Tardif, have been relieved of their duties.
Potulny’s run in charge of the Rangers’ next wave of prospects ends after just two years. A longtime assistant coach at the University of Minnesota before taking over Northern Michigan’s program, Hartford was Potulny’s first professional coaching job. The former Senators draft pick (fifth round, 2000) amassed a 56-71-17 record as Hartford missed out on the AHL’s 23-team playoffs on both occasions. Hartford’s 26 wins in 72 games this season gave them the league’s worst record.
It’s not as if Hartford’s roster is overflowing with high-end prospects, but their lack of scoring depth and defensive competency overall was striking. Only two players hit the 30-point mark: Trey Fix-Wolansky and Brendan Brisson. Not a single player with at least 25 games played for them logged a plus rating.
They’re now looking at a full minor-league coaching overhaul with both of Potulny’s assistants following him out the door. Mara, who played 156 games for the Rangers from 2007-09 as part of a 12-year NHL career, first joined the Blueshirts in a coaching capacity in 2023 on their development staff before being reassigned to the AHL staff later that year. All of his previous coaching experience had come in women’s hockey, winning a gold medal as an assistant on Team USA’s staff in 2018 while winning two NWHL/PHF titles with the Boston Pride in 2021 and 2022.
Tardif is the longest-tenured name among the group. The 41-year-old just wrapped up his fourth and final season as an assistant in Hartford. He’s yet to hold a head coaching gig at any level and was previously an assistant coach with the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds from 2018-22, as well as a player/coach with the ECHL’s Quad City Mallards in 2017-18.
Only former Coyotes draft pick Brendan Burke, son of longtime NHL netminder Sean Burke, remains among Hartford’s core coaching staff as their goalie coach. That makes sense given the success of Rangers third-stringer Dylan Garand there this season. Given Hartford’s struggles in front of him, Garand’s 16-15-2 record and .896 SV% in 36 outings stand out in a positive light.
AHL Notes: Burke, Mara, Jackson, Giroux
The AHL affiliate of the New York Rangers, the Hartford Wolf Pack, rounded out their coaching staff today as they announced the hire of Brendan Burke as the team’s goaltending coach and Paul Mara as one of the team’s assistant coaches. Burke is replacing Jeff Malcolm as the team’s full-time goaltending coach who was promoted to the Rangers’ goaltending coach yesterday.
It will be Burke’s first professional opportunity to coach after spending the last two years with the WHL’s Portland Winterhawks. In Portland, Burke would teach goaltenders Jan Spunar and Dante Giannuzzi during his two-year tenure with Spunar collecting a .908 SV% and .913% each year, respectively. Hartford will have several young options to compete for the backup role with Louis Domingue set to take on the starting minutes next season.
The Wolf Pack also decided to remove the interim tag from Mara after being brought to the organization in early December last year. Mara has already collected significant hardware as a coach as he previously served as the head coach of the Boston Pride in the NWHL and PHF. He coached the Pride to back-to-back championships in 2021 and 2022 while also collecting a gold medal as an assistant coach with Team USA’s Women’s team during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Other AHL notes:
- The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins have brought in an ECHL standout from last season as they announced an AHL contract for forward Kyle Jackson earlier today. After wrapping up his OHL career with the North Bay Battalion in 2022-23, Jackson spent all last year with the Kansas City Mavericks of the ECHL which saw him collect 14 goals and 44 points in 53 games. Jackson’s final two years in the OHL were extremely productive as he scored 61 goals and 145 points in 112 games leading to him being selected by the Seattle Kraken in the seventh round of the 2022 NHL Draft although he would not sign.
- The two-time defending Western Conference champion, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, have also entered the free agent market as the team has signed forward Damien Giroux to an AHL contract for the 2024-25 season. Giroux served in three seasons with the Iowa Wild as a playmaking option on the team’s bottom six before making his NHL debut with the Minnesota Wild on April 13, 2023. The young forward spent last year split between the AHL and ECHL with the Buffalo Sabres organization and will likely serve in a similar capacity with the Firebirds.