The Texas Stars are accustomed to succeeding.

Western Conference finalists a year ago, the Stars have made the postseason in 11 of their 14 tries. They won the Calder Cup in 2014, and reached the Finals two other times. Being near or at the top of the Central Division standings has been a pretty reliable standard.

But the team came out of the gate with six straight losses this season, and had just eight victories (8-13-2-1) by the time the first third of their schedule had passed on Dec. 12.

To be sure, the Stars had suffered some significant offseason personnel losses. Forward Matěj Blümel took his league-leading 39 goals to the Boston Bruins organization as a free agent. Another forward, Justin Hryckowian, graduated to the Dallas Stars after winning the Dudley (Red) Garrett Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding rookie last season. Standout defensemen Alex Petrovic and Kyle Capobianco found a roles in Dallas as well. And head coach Neil Graham joined the parent club as an assistant coach.

Coaching in general has been a remarkably consistent factor in Cedar Park. Going back to 2014, they had seen just Graham (2019-25) and Derek Laxdal (2014-19) running the Texas bench. With Graham’s promotion, the organization turned to Toby Petersen, a member of that 2014 championship team, to lead its AHL affiliate.

And maybe – just maybe – the Stars are back. They have earned points in eight of their last 11 games (7-3-1-0), including an impressive 2-0 road win over the dominating Grand Rapids Griffins on Friday night. Rémi Poirier led the way with 29 saves, Cameron Hughes and former Griffin Cross Hanas scored 51 seconds apart late in the middle period, and Texas handed the Griffins their first regulation loss in seven weeks.

Poirier came back with 30 saves to backstop the Stars to a 3-1 win at Chicago on Saturday, securing the Howies Hockey Tape/AHL Player of the Week nod from the AHL. The 24-year-old netminder has emerged as one of the Stars’ success stories despite the trying beginning to the season. In his fourth season with Texas, the net finally and indisputably belongs to him. And he has taken on the workload to match his status: his 24 appearances lead the AHL, while his 1,355 minutes place him second overall. He holds a 10-10-4 record to go with a 2.57 goals-against average and a .911 save percentage.

So Texas, for all of its troubles, has improved to 15-16-3-1 and climbed up to fourth place in the Central Division. They are just three points behind the third-place Manitoba Moose and trail second-place Chicago by only six points. And the Stars’ power play, a major source of difficulty this season, has started to awaken; after going 6-for-72 in the team’s first 25 games, the power play has gone 7-for-26 since.

Eight of their next 10 games will be at home to take them into the AHL All-Star break. Other than a quick hop to visit Rockford and Iowa next week, the Stars can settle in at home beginning with a visit from Coachella Valley tonight and Wednesday. Ontario, Henderson and Manitoba also make visits to H-E-B Center in the next month.

That said, establishing a much stronger home-ice presence will be job-one. The Stars have won four straight home games after starting the season 2-8-2-0 in Cedar Park, with all four of those wins coming against their rivals from Milwaukee.

The second-half schedule is encouraging, too. Texas has just two match-ups left with the league-leading Griffins, a trip to West Michigan in mid-February. But seven contests remain with the Wolves and four are left with the Moose. Finishing in the top three in the Central Division means avoiding a best-of-three first-round series.

Considerable work remains to be done after such a rough start. But Poirier’s goaltending is holding up, the power play is finding some life, and the Stars are settling in with their new head coach.

The next month could tell just how dangerous this team might become down the stretch and – perhaps – into the postseason.

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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Quinn Hutson returned from his latest stint in the National Hockey League earlier this week, and he keeps making it harder for the Oilers to keep him out of Edmonton.

The 24-year-old rookie put on his latest show in Abbotsford. He had a pair of goals and an assist to send the Bakersfield Condors past the Canucks, 5-3, on Tuesday night – his sixth three-point game this season. Then he added a power-play goal Wednesday in a 4-1 victory to complete the Condors’ sweep of their Pacific Division rival.

Hutson leads the entire American Hockey League with 22 goals. His 36 points are two off the league lead. In his last six games for Bakersfield, he has totaled nine goals and 12 points.

Hutson possesses an excellent shot that he has been more than willing to use with 82 shots on goal so far this season. He is 5-foot-11, 176 pounds, but he can play a sturdy game, take contact and manage his defensive responsibilities.

The older brother of Lane Hutson – who won the Calder Trophy as the outstanding rookie in the National Hockey League last season – Quinn landed with the Oilers as an undrafted free agent from Boston University last April. He skated in two games with Edmonton at the end of last season and has gotten into four NHL games so far in 2025-26, scoring his first big-league goal on Dec. 18 back in Boston against the Bruins. During his latest stint, Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch deployed Hutson on a line with fellow call-up Isaac Howard and Bakersfield graduate Matt Savoie.

Both first-year pros, Hutson and Howard have given the Condors a dominant scoring presence when they have been together in Bakersfield. Howard, who has 23 points in 16 AHL games, was the Fortune Tires “Expect More” AHL Player of the Month for December, while Hutson earned Upper Deck AHL Rookie of the Month honors. Put them on the ice together, as Condors head coach Colin Chaulk has been able to do at different points this season, and watch them work. Bakersfield’s 3.64 goals per game rank second in the AHL. So does the power play, which is clicking at 26.1 percent. For his part, Hutson has feasted on opposing penalty-killing units with the team lead in both power-play goals (10) and power-play points (18).

The Pacific Division is a jam-up with the AHL schedule soon to hit its midpoint; Bakersfield is in the middle of a pack that sees the top eight teams separated by eight points. A quick run can send a team surging past several competitors, but even a brief stumble can mean tumbling down the standings. In the Pacific, the division champion gets a first-round bye but second- through seventh-place teams must play a best-of-3 first-round series. So every point the Condors can earn while Hutson is still in their lineup is crucial.

Coming off a 50-point season at BU, Hutson had no shortage of suitors last spring. Edmonton felt like a fit. And if he has to spend some more time developing in Bakersfield, that’s OK. The Condors will enjoy him as long as he remains on their roster.

“I think there’s a path for me here,” Hutson told reporters during his recent time in Edmonton, “and maybe the path is moving faster than I thought.”

So what does he need to do while in Bakersfield?

“Keep going down there, working hard, not getting down on myself and just stay confident.”

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

theahl.com/category/news/patrick-williams

This is what the Lehigh Valley Phantoms can look like when the gang (mostly) gets back together.

The Phantoms knocked off the Belleville Senators, 3-1, on Saturday and then rolled to a 6-1 win in Toronto on Sunday. Tied at 1-1 in the second period against the Marlies, Oliver Bonk scored shorthanded – his first goal as a professional – to put the Phantoms ahead before they unloaded for four more goals in the third.

Carl Grundström, who had posted 15 points (six goals, nine assists) in 19 games with the Phantoms, went up to the Philadelphia Flyers and has produced seven goals in 14 games there. Rookie Denver Barkey, who had given the Phantoms 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 26 games, also remains with the Flyers and has fit in well.

Those are two major losses for Lehigh Valley, but they are getting back to a much more reasonable version of themselves. Forward Alex Bump rejoined the lineup Saturday after missing four games. Anthony Richard returned from competing for Canada at the Spengler Cup. And on New Year’s Eve, the Flyers made their fourth trade this season with direct implications for the Phantoms, shipping out defenseman Egor Zamula to the Pittsburgh Penguins for forward Phil Tomasino, who brings 218 games of NHL experience to Allentown.

There is also goaltender Aleksei Kolosov, who was named the Howies Hockey Tape/AHL Player of the Week after turning aside 60 of 61 shots in a pair of starts last week.

First-year head coach John Snowden has his club sitting third in the Atlantic Division thanks to a current streak of earning points in six straight games (5-0-1-0). That run includes shootout wins over Hartford and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and a shutout of Hershey on Dec. 31.

The Phantoms are also benefiting from a more stable situation in Philadelphia, where the parent club is 22-12-7 at the halfway point of its schedule. With the Flyers in a good place, the hits to the Lehigh Valley roster have been far less disruptive than in the past.

But that is not to say that Philadelphia assistant general manager Alyn McCauley has not been aggressive about reshaping the Phantoms.

Earlier this season they acquired defensemen Max Guenette, Christian Kyrou and Roman Schmidt to remake the Lehigh Valley back end. And the acquisition of Tomasino, a 2019 first-round pick by the Nashville Predators, also gives removes a point-per-game performer from the roster of the rival Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. The 24-year-old Tomasino fits a clear plan of attack for the Flyers, long an organization that has been willing to act aggressively via both trades and free agency. It’s the classic low-risk, buy-for-potential strategy for a player who recorded 24 points in 61 NHL games last season.

Kolosov, who turned 24 on Sunday, had a rocky debut season between Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley in 2024-25. This season, Philadelphia has a clear top tandem after signing Dan Vladar as a free agent to complement Samuel Ersson. That lack of ambiguity in Kolosov’s role has provided him with an opportunity to focus on his development with the Phantoms, and he has responded with a 9-8-1 record, a 2.51 GAA and a .910 save percentage in a rotation with rookie Carson Bjarnason.

Now comes the portion of the season that really tests development and shows what prospects really have to offer. Just seven points removed from the Atlantic Division lead, the Phantoms are back on the road this weekend for a two-game jaunt to New England, where they will face Springfield and Providence. Right now they look like a solid pick to join the Calder Cup Playoff field come April, but they haven’t made a significant postseason run since a 2018 charge to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Philadelphia has made development and winning at the AHL level a key part of its overall organizational rebuild. These next three-plus months in Lehigh Valley will be one step toward those objectives.

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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A 30th birthday is a major one for just about anybody, and it brings with it the potential for all sorts of life changes.

Christian Wolanin knows that.

Wolanin, who turned 30 last March, won a Calder Cup championship, got married, faced a reckoning of his hockey future, and eventually landed a contract with one of the AHL’s top teams.

Those swings in fortune shaped life for Wolanin in 2025.

Last January 4, the Abbotsford Canucks found themselves stalled in the Pacific Division standings and feeling the sting of a 6-2 thumping at the hands of the Laval Rocket. A post-game, players-only meeting followed. Wolanin, then a key part of Abbotsford’s leadership group, and his teammates found themselves in danger of slipping out of contention. Instead they regrouped, went 30-9-1-1 the rest of the regular season, and then fought their way through five rounds of the Calder Cup Playoffs.

By the time June 23 arrived, a team that was floundering in January had become Calder Cup champions. Wolanin played a major role in that surge, too. He had delivered a goal and 27 assists in his final 41 regular-season games. Then came 10 more points (two goals, eight assists) in 17 playoff contests.

Going into free agency, surely Wolanin could expect a number of excellent offers for 2025-26 and maybe even beyond. He was a two-time AHL All-Star, and won the Eddie Shore Award as the AHL’s outstanding defensemen in 2022-23. Add in 86 NHL regular-season games as an easy plug-and-play recall option for a team. And now he had a Calder Cup to his name.

Everyone loves a winner.

Except it didn’t happen.

July came and went. So did August. September, too. Nothing.

Wolanin is frank about the situation.

“You don’t really expect it to go like that after winning, right?” said Wolanin, who had offseason surgery to repair a sports hernia. “There’s not a lot of businesses where you can go backwards after having success.”

The ripple effect for jobs in pro hockey is a very real one. One player signs somewhere, and the spin-off results can impact several other players both here in North America and overseas. All the while, Wolanin still had to stay in top condition just in case a phone call did come from a general manager out there. Basing himself in the Los Angeles area in the offseason, he skated alongside fellow free agents Chase De Leo and Matt Nieto. That meant a 90-minute commute to Toyota Sports Performance Center, the practice facility for the Los Angeles Kings and Ontario Reign.

It was a long way from playoff hockey and winning a championship.

“It makes you appreciate when you do have a team because that grind is no joke,” Wolanin admitted. “I guess it answers the question how much you really love the game.”

Still, he had plenty of joy to carry him through those long commutes. For one, he got married.

Now he just needed a job, as summer slipped into the fall months and nothing came his way.

“You just try to understand the situation,” Wolanin said. “It was kind of tough for my wife (Emily) and I just sitting at home jobless. I’ve been through a lot of adversity, humbly, and I like to think that I’ve always come out on the better half of things.”

Finally his fortune changed Nov. 20. That’s when the Providence Bruins brought him on a professional tryout. Injuries had hit the Boston Bruins, which meant that Providence found itself in need of immediate help. Not a full contract, but beggars can’t be choosers, of course. And Providence is a prime landing spot for any player in the AHL.

It had been a wait, but a worthwhile one.

“I was more than thankful to get a call from a high-end team with a great culture,” Wolanin said, “and they were already winning games. So, it kind of made my job easy to just come in and try to contribute and facilitate and just keep them winning.”

Wolanin’s P-Bruins debut came quickly. Two nights after signing, he was on the ice in Providence for a clash with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. In his second game, a 5-1 win at Toronto on Nov. 26, he supplied four assists. Then a two-assist night at Belleville, one of his former stops, followed, and he quickly became a mainstay on the Providence back end.

The Bruins have come away happy with the match as well, signing Wolanin on Dec. 7 to a standard AHL player’s contract for the rest of the season.

“He fits perfectly into what we need and who we need,” head coach Ryan Mougenel said. “And there’s opportunity for him here, for sure.”

At 22-6-1-0 (.776), the Bruins have the best record in the Eastern Conference. Wolanin is able to move the puck out of trouble as well as distribute it. He can boost any power play, and Providence ranks fifth in the AHL on the man-advantage at 25.3 percent. One of Wolanin’s best strengths is his ability to create offensively but to do so with patience and poise. He doesn’t force plays unnecessarily.

“He’s been as advertised,” Mougenel continued. “I’ve been following his career for quite a while, so I’ve always kind of been a fan. He’s really giving us a different kind of dynamic back there. He sees plays before they’re there. He’s calm, he’s steady, he’s full of life. And he’s been coached by some really good coaches. I know Todd McLellan’s had a strong influence on him, and I’m a little bit of a disciple of Todd’s.”

Now that Wolanin is settled in with Providence, it would be easy to forget what his situation was like just six weeks ago. He has not.

“I’m sitting here acting like it was all sunshine and rainbows, and it wasn’t,” Wolanin acknowledged. “I was getting impatient a little bit, getting a little frustrated with the situation. But you find out how much you really love the game when you’re airing out your own gear in your trunk of your car.

“It just tests your will.”

Now Wolanin is back in the game, and he has a chance to make another charge for the Calder Cup.

“As much as it was frustrating and a little bit confusing,” Wolanin said, “I’m more than thankful to end up in a spot like this with a great group of guys.

“I think the one thing I came out of it with is that I love this game, and I’ll do anything to keep playing.”

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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What a year.

The arrival of 2026 will bring the second half of the AHL’s 90th anniversary season, an outdoor game in Minnesota, the Rockford IceHogs hosting the AHL All-Star Classic, and then two-month gauntlet that is the Calder Cup Playoffs.

As 2025 comes to a close, here is a look back at one of the most memorable years in AHL history.

Abbotsford Canucks lift the Calder Cup for the first time
The Calder Cup came west for the first time as the Canucks pulled out a 3-2 win at Charlotte in Game 6 of the Calder Cup Finals on June 23. It was the first Calder Cup title for a Vancouver Canucks affiliate.

They became the first Pacific Division team to win the Calder Cup since the AHL expanded to the west coast in 2015. Abbotsford overcame a middling midseason record to go on a 30-9-1-1 tear down the stretch and qualify for the Calder Cup Playoffs. From there, they eliminated the Tucson Roadrunners, Coachella Valley Firebirds, Colorado Eagles and Texas Stars to reach the Finals under rookie head coach Manny Malhotra.

Goaltender Artūrs Šilovs led the way for Abbotsford, going 16-7 with a 2.01 goals-against average, a .931 save percentage and five shutouts to win the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as the most valuable player of the Calder Cup Playoffs.

Montreal Canadiens prospects find success
You’d have to go back more than 30 years to see the last time a Montreal Canadiens affiliate finished first overall in the AHL during the regular season.

That is until last April, when the Laval Rocket captured the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the 2024-25 regular-season champion with a 48-19-3-2 record. It was the first time that a full Habs affiliate won a regular-season title since the 1991-92 Fredericton Canadiens.

The Rocket eliminated the Cleveland Monsters and Rochester Americans to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals before falling to Charlotte. And they have again emerged as one of the top contenders this season with a North Division-best 20-10-0-1 mark.

Another Milwaukee-Texas showdown
If it’s springtime, it must be time for the Milwaukee Admirals and Texas to clash in the Calder Cup Playoffs.

The teams met for the third consecutive postseason with a five-game Central Division Finals classic. They alternated wins through the first four games before Texas took the deciding Game 5 with a 3-2 road victory. AHL rookie of the year Justin Hryckowian scored with 5:05 to go in regulation to secure the series.

Texas had come up short in playoff series against Milwaukee in 2023 and 2024 that each went a full five games.

Marco Sturm off to Boston
Three solid seasons with the Ontario Reign set up head coach Marco Sturm for his next move in the coaching profession.

That call came June 5 when the Boston Bruins named Sturm their new head coach. With Ontario, where he had gone 119-80-11-6, Sturm completed an impressive climb to the NHL. That journey also featured stints with the Los Angeles Kings as an assistant coach as well as international experience with Germany’s men’s national program that included winning the silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Todd Nelson moves on to the NHL
After back-to-back Calder Cup titles and moving players up to the Washington Capitals, Todd Nelson’s moved on from the Hershey Bears when he took an offer from the Pittsburgh Penguins to join them as an assistant coach June 20.

Nelson’s 450 regular-season coaching wins rank him fifth in AHL history, and 141 of them came in Hershey. He finished with a .704 points percentage, tops in Hershey history. He also won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding coach in 2023-24.

Nelson has won the Calder Cup three times as a head coach to go with his 1994 title as a player and a follow-up in 2008 as an assistant coach.

AHL head coaches moving up
Nelson and Sturm were not the lone AHL head coaches to get the NHL call, either.

Neil Graham of Texas joined the parent Dallas Stars as an assistant coach after leading their AHL affiliate for parts of six seasons. In Colorado, it was Eagles mainstay Aaron Schneekloth moving on to the Seattle Kraken to become an assistant coach there in his first NHL opportunity. Calgary Wranglers head coach Trent Cull, who had spent part of last season as an interim assistant coach with the Calgary Flames, had that NHL role made permanent as well.

Grand Rapids has a record-breaking start
While much more history could be made by the Grand Rapids Griffins in 2026, they made 2025 a pretty special year, too.

The team closed out 2025 with a remarkable record of 26-1-1-1, including a 15-game winning streak that was snapped in an overtime loss to Milwaukee on New Year’s Eve. They hit the 50-point mark faster than any team in AHL history, and they have yet to lose in regulation on the road this season (13-0-0-1). Dan Watson’s club has already built a 19-point lead on top of the Central Division before the season has even reached its halfway point.

What will 2026 bring for the Griffins as they seek their third Calder Cup championship?

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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A slew of familiar AHL names will be spending the next week in Switzerland.

December on the international hockey calendar means that the Swiss ski resort town of Davos hosts the Spengler Cup. Hockey Canada ices a team at the six-team tournament each year and relies heavily on American Hockey League talent on loan to fill out its roster. In its 97th year, the Spengler Cup is hockey’s oldest international club tournament.

Eleven current AHL players are on Team Canada’s roster including Rockford IceHogs captain Brett Seney, who is one point off the league scoring lead with 30 points (nine goals, 21 assists) in 29 games. Michel Therrien, a head coach for seven seasons with AHL affiliates for the Montreal Canadiens and Pittsburgh Penguins, is in that same role for Canada, and his staff also features assistant coach Drew Bannister, who spent parts of six seasons in AHL coaching roles for the St. Louis Blues; Bannister took the Springfield Thunderbirds to the 2022 Calder Cup Finals.

Seney and Canada opened play Friday with a 3-2 win over a team of U.S. Collegiate Selects. The tournament, which runs through New Year’s Eve, also features a pair of Swiss clubs in host HC Davos and HC Fribourg-Gottéron, IFK Helsinki (Finland), and HC Sparta Prague (Czechia).

Ontario Reign captain Joe Hicketts will carry over that role and lead Canada. Joining Hicketts in Canada’s leadership group is another AHL captain, Mason Shaw of the Manitoba Moose; Shaw will serve as an alternate captain. Springfield captain Matthew Peca is also donning Canadian red-and-white in Davos.

Canada’s blue line has a particularly deep AHL look to it. Along with Hicketts, Canada’s defense corps has Calen Addison (Utica Comets), Nolan Allan (Rockford), Nikolas Brouillard (San Diego) and Jake Livingstone. Up front along with Peca, Seney and Shaw, the Canadian roster has Graeme Clarke (Hershey), Jean-Luc Foudy (Iowa) and Anthony Richard (Lehigh Valley).

A Spengler Cup invitation means a chance for AHL players to represent their home country internationally. While this is Seney’s second consecutive year going to the tournament, all of the other AHL talent is making its Spengler Cup debut. Canada, a 16-time Spengler Cup champion since making its debut in 1984, last won the tournament in 2019.

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

theahl.com/category/news/patrick-williams

Three days, three games and four points later, Andrew Campbell could call it a successful debut weekend.

Last Wednesday, the Ottawa Senators announced that they had relieved David Bell of his post as Belleville’s head coach. Campbell, a long-time AHL defenseman in his second season as an assistant coach with the Senators, suddenly had a new assignment: Ottawa appointed him the interim head coach of their AHL affiliate.

The move came just be before the Sens had to hit the road to start a three-in-three weekend with a visit to Rochester on Friday. Then it was back across the border for a Saturday matinee in Toronto before closing out a home-and-home with the rival Marlies.

The AHL road is a familiar place for Campbell, who played 719 games in the league between 2008 and 2019 with affiliates of the Los Angeles Kings, Arizona Coyotes, Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Blackhawks. He also played 42 games in the NHL.

A leader across all of his stops, Campbell made a quick move into coaching, joining the Ontario Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs as an assistant in 2021. He took the Belleville opportunity in July 2024.

In-season coaching changes in the AHL typically come when an NHL team shakes up its coaching staff and promotes a staff member from its AHL affiliate. In Belleville’s case, though, a 2-8-2-0 slide preceded Ottawa opting to shake up its AHL operation. Belleville’s first-year general manager Matt Turek spent time as GM in Hamilton, his tenure overlapping with Campbell’s.

With a bit of practice time, a bus ride and a morning skate, it was time for Campbell to lead the B-Sens behind the bench.

Belleville went into Rochester and secured a point in a 3-2 overtime loss on Friday. The next day, the Sens saw a 2-0 lead dwindle away before Lassi Thomson’s tally with 1:57 to go in regulation got the game to OT again. It finished in a 4-3 defeat, but a point earned is a point earned for a team trying to regain its footing.

Back home the following afternoon at CAA Arena, the Senators hit back hard. They took leads of 2-1 and 5-2 before turning the game into a rout and tying a franchise record for goals in an 8-4 victory.

“The first 24 hours were definitely a whirlwind,” Campbell said before his first game in his new post. “The phone’s been pretty busy over the last little bit, which is all good.

“We’ve got a really good team in that room.”

Sunday’s 8-4 decision will still be fresh in both teams’ minds when the feisty rivalry resumes with a Boxing Day matinee at Scotiabank Arena, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Belleville has slipped one point ahead of the Marlies in the North Division, and through the upheaval they are still just six points in back of co-leaders Syracuse and Laval.

Campbell had been through many of those three-in-three weekends as a player. By Sunday evening, he knew what his players had just been through, especially given the all-divisional slate.

“It’s a long weekend,” Campbell said after his first head-coaching win. “For the guys to put forth the effort that they did, [I am] just proud of them in that room there.”

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

theahl.com/category/news/patrick-williams

The NHL’s roster freeze took hold at Saturday midnight and halts activity until Dec. 28.

Some organizations got ahead of that deadline and made moves to get their AHL rosters in order. The midpoint of the 2025-26 season is only weeks away, after all. From that point forward, it will be a full sprint into the second half and toward the Calder Cup Playoffs.

Let’s review some of the biggest swaps made around the AHL so far.

Bakersfield Condors
An already-productive offense got that much stronger Dec. 12 when forward Sam Poulin came to the Edmonton Oilers organization in a major deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Bakersfield is averaging 3.56 goals per game so far and is third overall on the power play at 26.5 percent (26-for-98).

But in Poulin, 24, they have someone who paced one of the AHL’s top teams, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, with 20 points (nine goals, 11 assists) in 22 contests before the trade. Poulin was a 2019 first-round pick by Pittsburgh as well. He picked up a pair of assists in his Condors debut at Tucson on Dec. 13. Used on the left side with impressive newcomer Viljami Marjala early in his Condors tenure. With Quinn Hutson and his 16 goals (second-most in the AHL) on recall to Edmonton, Poulin’s arrival is that much more important for Bakersfield.

Iowa Wild
Minnesota Wild management has shown willingness to be aggressive through a third of the 2025-26 season.

That approach, of course, resulted in a massive trade with the Vancouver Canucks on Dec. 12 that brought star defenseman Quinn Hughes to Minnesota. But Minnesota has also been looking for potential bargains. One of those attempts came Oct. 17 when they acquired forward Oskar Olausson from the San Jose Sharks.

As Iowa tries to shake off a slow start, Olausson figures to be a key part of the roster. He has been mainly used on the left side of the top-six and has generated nine points (three goals, six assists) through 23 games in Iowa green.

Lehigh Valley Phantoms
No NHL team has been more active in revamping its AHL defense corps than the Philadelphia Flyers have.

TheAHL.com examined those moves in detail earlier this month, as deals with the Dallas Stars, Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning brought Christian Kyrou, Max Guenette and Roman Schmidt into the Philadelphia organization. All three players have since settled in on the Lehigh Valley blue line.

As usual, the Phantoms find themselves in the middle of the ultra-competitive Atlantic Division. Even with a bit of a recent dip, they remain firmly in contention. Their 14-11-1-2 record has them planted third in the division.

Rockford IceHogs
With rookie forwards Oliver Moore and Nick Lardis up with the Blackhawks, The IceHogs brought back forward Rem Pitlick in a trade with Bakersfield last week. Pitlick was with Rockford in 2023-24, he had 33 points (14 goals, 19 assists) in 27 games. He recorded 15 points in 24 games with the Condors before the deal.

Pitlick made his first game back with the IceHogs an impactful one, providing a goal and three assists in Saturday’s 7-3 win at Manitoba.

Springfield Thunderbirds
The Thunderbirds are working to undo the damage of a slow start, and St. Louis Blues management has been active in making changes to the AHL roster.

On Nov. 3, the Blues brought back defenseman Calle Rosén from the Washington Capitals. Rosén, one of the AHL’s most proven puck distributors, was part of the Springfield team that went to the Calder Cup Finals in 2022 and won a championship with the Toronto Marlies in 2018.

Springfield had averaged just 2.33 goals per game (26th in the AHL) at the time of the deal. In their 16 games since then, the team has bumped its goal production up to 2.81 goals per game.

St. Louis also sent forward Nikita Alexandrov to the Los Angeles Kings for forward Akil Thomas on Dec. 2. Thomas, 25, has yet to make his Springfield debut, however.

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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The Iowa Wild had their guests right where they wanted them last night.

Two goals from Wild forward Hunter Haight put the visiting Grand Rapids Griffins in a 2-0 hole with less than nine minutes left in the second period. Iowa, still trying to find its collective game following a difficult start to the season, had held the AHL’s top team to just 10 shots on goal through a period and a half.

Incredibly, it was just the third time all season that the Griffins trailed by two goals.

Then the game turned. While so much of this season’s story in Grand Rapids has been the team’s league-best offense, there is much more to the Griffins. Their ability to overwhelm opponents goes far beyond the top line.

With John Leonard and his league-leading 19 goals on recall to Detroit, the Griffins’ offensive response last night began from the back end. Just 1:40 after Iowa took a 2-0 lead, Alex Kannok Leipert one-timed a shot from the left point past Iowa goaltender Samuel Hlavaj. It was the first goal since Apr. 6 and just the sixth in 206 career AHL games for Kannok Leipert, a sturdy defenseman whose main mandate is his reliable – and physical – defensive play.

Ian Mitchell, another steady defenseman, tied the game 4:36 into the third period when he held his ice just inside the blue line before taking the puck into open space and sneaking a long shot through traffic and past Hlavaj.

Then captain Dominik Shine struck at 7:23 to give the Griffins their first lead. He added his second of the period at 17:26, and Gabriel Seger finished the scoring with an empty-netter at 19:31.

The win was Grand Rapids’ 23rd in 25 games this season, the best start in the AHL’s 90-year history. It was another team-wide effort – they surrendered only one power-play opportunity to the Wild, and allowed only one third-period shot on goal while scoring four times in the final 20 minutes. Sebastian Cossa, who saw only 18 shots all night, improved to 13-1-0 with his eighth consecutive win. Eleven different skaters registered a point, with Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, Sheldon Dries and Erik Gustafsson each chipping in a pair of assists.

Riding a 12-game winning streak, the Griffins have already opened up a 16-point lead at the top of the Central Division. Up next is a rematch at Iowa on Friday night followed by a Sunday home date with Cleveland. They close out 2025 with a home-and-home with Milwaukee on Dec. 27 and Dec. 31.

Can the Griffins see this through all the way to April? All the way into June? It’s still early – two-thirds of the regular season remains – but it seems fair to start drawing comparisons between these Griffins and other powerhouse teams in AHL history. The 1992-93 Binghamton Rangers put up a .775 points percentage (57-13-10), the league’s best mark ever. The 2011-12 Norfolk Admirals won 28 games in a row. The Hershey Bears’ 2009-10 team won a record 60 games (in an 80-game season). Just two years ago, Hershey set the standard for a 72-game season with 53 wins and 111 points.

More than a few hurdles are still ahead of Grand Rapids. They still have 19 meetings left with Chicago and Milwaukee, their closest rivals. There’s a February visit to Charlotte – the only team to knock off the Griffins in regulation this season, a 2-1 decision on Nov. 21. Eleven of their final 14 games will be on the road. And of course, there are the usual potential pitfalls like recalls, injuries and plain bad puck luck that can sidetrack any team.

But 25 games in, it’s looking like the Griffins might have something special here.

Patrick Williams

On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.

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Past or present, the Providence Bruins’ goaltending picture has long been quite secure.

Over the past three decades, Providence has been home to such Bruins prospects as John Grahame, Andrew Raycroft, Tim Thomas, Tuukka Rask and Dan Vladar.

These days Brandon Bussi has become one of the NHL’s best early-season stories. Bussi, now with the Carolina Hurricanes, became the fastest to 10 career wins in NHL history. But Bussi spent parts of four seasons developing with the P-Bruins before eventually ending up with Carolina this season.

Still in Providence is Michael DiPietro, last season’s winner of the Aldege “Baz” Bastien Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding goaltender.

And joining DiPietro this season is Simon Zajicek, the latest promising goaltending addition in Providence, where the Bruins are off to a 19-5-1-0 start.

“I think the first thing is that they both are fantastic with each other,” head coach Ryan Mougenel said. “Michael’s done a real good job of mentoring.”

The Boston Bruins have long shown a knack for finding and securing overlooked talent. Last season with Czech club HC Litvinov, Zajicek went 15-13-0 in 29 games to go with a 2.12 goals-against average and the league’s top save percentage at .930.

Boston’s scouting staff – namely goaltending development coach Mike Dunham – identified the 24-year-old Zajicek as a target to shore up the organization’s depth in goal. It stood as a low-risk arrangement for both sides – a one-year, entry-level deal.

The Bruins have also long had a successful Czech talent pipeline across all positions, most notably stars David Krejci and David Pastrnak. Signing with Boston allowed Zajicek to make the always-challenging overseas move to a set-up that would offer a sturdy foundation for the next stage of his career.

“It was always my dream to come to the U.S.,” Zajicek explained, “I’m glad I’m here with the Bruins.”

Zajicek’s play has continued to validate what Boston saw in him, to the points that Mougenel is already comfortable giving either of his goaltenders the net. DiPietro is 10-4-0 with a 1.97 GAA and a .933 save percentage in 15 games; Zajicek is 9-1-1 along with a 2.02 GAA and a .932 save percentage. And the two have hit it off in their first few months working alongside each other.

Last weekend, Zajicek took a Friday night start in Hershey and quieted the Bears with 29 saves in a 4-1 win. A night later, it was DiPietro’s turn at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and he took care of the first 14 shots that he faced in the first period. But 12:29 into the game, DiPietro exited with an undisclosed issue. The Bruins turned back to Zajicek, who put forth perhaps the best effort of his already-excellent season so far, stopping 34 of 36 shots in relief to help Providence earn a point in a 2-1 overtime loss – despite being outshot, 50-25.

DiPietro’s status remains unclear, and Luke Cavallin has been summoned from ECHL Maine. But there is no doubt that the team is comfortable turning the reins over to Zajicek. This has been a union that works all around – for the organization, for Providence, and for both goaltenders.

“I’m feeling great,” Zajicek said. “We win, and the boys are helping me so much.”

Said Mougenel of Providence’s latest goaltending find, “He’s been excellent.”