Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Twenty years in the past, two gamers joined the Philadelphia Phantoms, helped to cause them to a Calder Cup championship, and shortly turned constructing blocks for the guardian Philadelphia Flyers.
You’d be hard-pressed to discover a higher story of the co-existence of growing and successful within the AHL.
Within the spring of 2005, Jeff Carter and Mike Richards got here straight out of the Ontario Hockey League and into key roles within the Calder Cup Playoffs. The Flyers had chosen every of them within the first spherical of the 2003 NHL Draft – Carter eleventh general, Richards twenty fourth – and have been desperate to get the 20-year-old forwards essential professional improvement expertise within the AHL.
Carter led the Phantoms with 12 targets and 23 factors in 21 playoff video games. Richards contributed 15 factors in 14 video games. Philadelphia gained the Calder Cup in a four-game sweep of Chicago – culminating in entrance of 20,103 followers on the Wachovia Middle, nonetheless the biggest postseason crowd in AHL historical past.
Richards would later function captain of the Flyers for 3 years. He and Carter led the group to the Stanley Cup Remaining in 2010. They might win two championships along with Los Angeles, and mixed to play greater than 2,300 regular-season and playoff video games within the Nationwide Hockey League.
This yr’s Phantoms group, which moved from Philadelphia to Glens Falls in 2009 and on to Allentown in 2014, isn’t the powerhouse that the 2005 group was; the workmanlike group obtained into the Calder Cup Playoffs because the fifth seed within the Atlantic Division earlier than eliminating Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and is now one win away from knocking off their archrivals from Hershey within the division semifinals.
However what is going on in Lehigh Valley this spring ought to have a substantial influence on Philadelphia’s long-term outlook.
And again in 2005, the Flyers had simply come inside a win of reaching the Stanley Cup Remaining a yr earlier. They went on to succeed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2006, bottomed out for one season, after which had put themselves again into the Stanley Cup Remaining by 2010. The Flyers of at present, nonetheless seeking to kind out their teaching workers for subsequent fall, are engaged in an ongoing rebuilding effort. They’ve missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs 5 consecutive seasons, matching the longest drought within the proud franchise’s lengthy historical past.
What occurs in Lehigh Valley this spring and past might and may have a substantial influence on Philadelphia’s long-term outlook. Emil Andrae, a second-round decide by the Flyers in 2020, performed 42 NHL video games this season and appears each bit like a long-term match with the NHL group. Rodrigo Ābols, Helge Grans and Jacob Gaucher made their NHL debuts with Philadelphia this season. continues his improvement on the Lehigh Valley blue line. Nikita Grebenkin, acquired in a March take care of the Toronto Maple Leafs, has proven appreciable promise as nicely.
After which, twenty years after Carter and Richards, there are forwards Jett Luchanko and Alex Bump. One is an 18-year-old first-round decide from final yr’s NHL Draft. The opposite is a 21-year-old fifth-rounder from the 2022 draft class who’s enjoying like somebody chosen a lot increased.
Luchanko, who doesn’t flip 19 till August, made the Flyers out of coaching camp earlier than returning to junior, the place he had 56 factors (21 targets, 35 assists) in 46 video games with Guelph of the OHL this season. With Lehigh Valley, he has 5 assists in six video games in the course of the postseason. Bump gained a nationwide championship at Western Michigan College final month, main his group with 23 targets and 47 factors in 42 video games. Since turning professional, the 21-year-old had one purpose and two assists in two fast regular-season appearances with the Phantoms earlier than including two extra targets within the playoffs to date.
Luchanko and Bump try to soak up as a lot as potential on this postseason run. It’s by no means practically as straightforward as Carter and Richards made it look 20 years in the past. There’s the adjustment to the professional sport on the very time of the yr that the extent of play begins to peak.
With the PPL Middle only a quick commute from Philadelphia, in addition they play in entrance of a big contingent of Flyers administration nightly. Participant improvement has come a good distance within the final 20 years, with in depth coaching plans, improvement and expertise coaches, group cooks, and a facility just like the one in Allentown that’s primarily only a scaled-down model of an NHL constructing with all the assets that entails.
The Flyers group works to ease that transition to the professional sport, and Bump says that this adjustment has gone easily.
“The very best sort of hockey,” Bump mentioned of the playoffs. “The blokes within the locker room are ensuring I do know what I have to know, what I’ve to do. It’s super-easy simply to stroll into, get the methods down, and all the fellows listed below are looking for me.”
There’s additionally the affable, easy-to-talk-to head coach Ian Laperriere, a former seventh-round draft decide who went on to play 1,083 video games within the NHL. He labored as a Flyers assistant coach for 9 seasons earlier than taking the Lehigh Valley publish in 2021. Two younger gamers – one nonetheless an adolescent – can be taught a factor or two from somebody like that.
“A participant’s coach, for positive,” Bump mentioned of Laperriere. “He will get it. He’s been by it. He is aware of what it’s wish to be a younger man and play in professional hockey. Any errors I make, he’s there to appropriate it so it gained’t occur once more. He’s simply been there for me after I want one thing.”
Luchanko has had lots to soak up this season. He performed for John Tortorella in coaching camp and early within the season earlier than returning to Guelph, the place he was coached by long-time NHL ahead Cory Stillman. He went to the IIHF World Junior Championship with Canada at midseason, and now there’s his ongoing training with the Phantoms.
“It’s been a great way to complete up the season right here,” Luchanko mentioned, “play with some fairly good gamers, get to play playoff hockey. They’ve all welcomed me very well.
“I’ve been quite a lot of completely different locations,” he continued, “so it’s sort of cool to see the methods groups work and day-to-day issues that guys do to play this sport as their job. It was cool to see how issues work there (in Philadelphia), and it’s straightforward motivation for me to hopefully return subsequent yr.”
Subsequent yr’s coaching camp remains to be 4 months away. Selections shall be made then, however actually all the things that occurs now with the Phantoms will go into figuring out the fast futures of Bump, Luchanko and the remainder of these Philadelphia prospects.
For now, although, the main focus is on Recreation 5 in Hershey on Sunday, and a run within the Calder Cup Playoffs to pursue. Carter and Richards took this path 20 years in the past. Do it proper, and there could be a championship and a protracted NHL profession forward.
On the American Hockey League beat for twenty years, TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams additionally at the moment covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is an everyday contributor on SiriusXM NHL Community Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
