Upholding A Standard

I'll be honest right out of the gate here: I hated this logo for the longest time. When I was younger, I used to attend Manitoba Moose games regularly when they played in the International Hockey League. The IHL was a bit of an arms race for teams as there were always NHL players who signed in the league as their careers wound down. There were former AHL players who could score, but were past that point of development that teams simply weren't willing to invest any additional time in them. And there were the international stars who needed a place to showcase their talents as free agents. One team who always seemed to have the best of the best of all of these types of players was the Chicago Wolves.

I hated that logo because you knew that beating the Wolves on any given night would take a solid, 60-minute game from every player as they had established themselves as the standard when it came to perennial success in the IHL. That standard they had set followed them when the IHL was absorbed by the AHL, and it appears that the Wolves are going back to that standard today as they announced they will go into the 2023-24 AHL season without an NHL affiliation after walking away from their affiliation with the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes.

According to both The Hockey News and The Athletic, Wolves' General Manager Wendell Young sent an email to player agents saying the affiliation with the Hurricanes would end, and that the Wolves would operate as an independent organization in 2023-24. Young invited agents to inform their clients that the Wolves would be interested in signing players as an independent AHL franchise, and that the franchise would be independent beginning next season.

It should be noted that the Wolves will miss the Calder Cup Playoffs this season after winning the AHL championship last season. We saw repeated call-ups and roster moves by the Hurricanes this season with players like Jack Drury, Pyotr Kochetkov, and Maxime Lajoie moving between the AHL and NHL regularly, and that makes winning at the AHL level harder when the best players are in and out of the Wolves' line-up whenever the Hurricanes needed someone. For an AHL team operating independently, winning matters to its owners so having these key players missing often hurts their chances of winning.

Back in 2017, I had noted the former IHL teams' successes after they had been absorbed by the AHL. With Chicago winning last season, we can add another title to that list, but the problems with the roster is that there was a pile of turnover thanks to Carolina's decisions with its players and Chicago having to maneuver and manage its independently-signed players around Carolina's decision. That turnover led to a number of key players leaving the Wolves, and the end result was failing to reach the playoffs one year after winning the Calder Cup.

That never would have happened in the IHL when the Wolves were an annual favorite to win the Turner Cup. In saying that, I can't say if this is a wise move by the Wolves, but I do know they were wildly successful as an independent team for a long time. If they can attract a number of players who want one more shot at glory or a pile of players looking for a second chance, they could be a very good team next season.

Of course, they could also end up signing a pile of unknown players from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan, but I suspect the Wolves will re-establish that standard of excellence they maintained for so many years prior to their NHL affiliations.

If this experiment works, might we see other teams such as Hershey or Milwaukee look to gain their independence back? It's far too early to make that assessment, but those two franchises have also done a good job in their histories of establishing winning standards.

Could it lead to future AHL expansion where independent clubs join the league? Perhaps we could see a return to San Antonio or Salt Lake City where independent ownership groups establish AHL teams and follow the same plan as the Wolves. Again, it's far too early to make any long-term extrapolations, but that may also be an option one day.

Whatever happens, the Wolves are embarking on a new path in the AHL. We'll see if the choise was a wise one or a foolish one based on how long this decision lasts, but, if the Wolves are re-establishing their independent winning ways again, this is the first step that must be taken. The rest will be on them to find players who want to make those standards a reality once more.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!