CANTLON: (SAT) WOLF PACK ON THE ROAD 

CANTLON: (SAT) Wolf Pack On the Road

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

HARTFORD, CT – The  Hartford Wolf Pack will not be back at the XL Center until Friday, February 23^rd at 7:15 pm against the Hershey Bears. This current road trip is one of the longest stretches the team’s had in its 21 years of existence.

The road trip is a grueling six-games-in-eight-days. The trip covers Charlotte, Lehigh Valley, and then back to Bridgeport before they sleep back in their own beds.

The two stops in Charlotte did not go well in their inaugural visit to Bojangles Coliseum.

Game 1 was one of the team’s poorest efforts of the year. The Pack were shutout 6-0 and were outshot by a better than three-to-one margin (45-12) thus ending their ten game streak of gaining at least a point.

Game 2 was a bit better. They still lost though, dropping the game, 3-2. A second straight regulation loss. Lias Andersson picked up a goal and an assist in his tenth game. Brandon Halverson, after nearly a month of not playing, started his third straight game. Halverson was recalled Friday to go to Ottawa to back up Henrik Lundqvist when Alexander Georgiev, who was scheduled to make his NHL debut, came down with the flu. They also have a matinee game at MSG Sunday against Philadelphia.

The Pack signed goaltender Drew Fielding from Adirondack (ECHL). Fielding is in his third season of pro hockey and will backup rookie, Chris Nell. Fielding played Division III college hockey with St. Thomas (MN) (mica).

Tough as this road trip is for the Wolf Pack, try considering some AHL road trips of the late 1980’s, and suddenly it’s a breeze. The Baltimore Skipjacks once played in 1989 on the road trip from hell. The team traveled from Baltimore to Hershey, then on to Portland, Maine, followed by a jaunt to Glens Falls, NY (Adirondack) If that weren’t enough, the team then took off for the Canadian Maritimes, Moncton, Halifax and Cape Breton, then back to New Haven. That trip was seven games in nine days and covered 3,400 miles.

A BACKUP GOALIE DREAM

Andrew Margolin had his dream can come true, even if it was for just two hours.

As part of a four-man rotation system, Margolin is an emergency backup goalie for the Rangers as required under the CBA rules. The situations are rare and unusual, but they can happen. For Margolin last week at MSG while the Rangers battled the Calgary Flames, the impossible happened.

The Rangers saw their number two goalie, Czech-native, Ondrej Pavelec suffer a knee injury in the first period. Upon examination, after the period it was determined he couldn’t continue. Henrik Lundqvist, who had played the night before, where he was pulled for the third time in his last six games, and he had to go in.

Obviously, there was no time to call Hartford, so a text went up to Margolin in the press box to get downstairs and suit up.

Margolin has solid CT hockey roots. The Mahwah, NJ native played his prep school hockey at Taft Prep (Watertown, CT) as the Rhinos goalie for three years under the guidance of former Hamden High star, Dan Murphy, who, after last season, took a job at New Hampton School in New Hampshire.

Murphy played collegiately at University of Maine (HE) winning an NCAA title. He was a Boston Bruins draft pick and had a short, three season ECHL pro career, before getting into coaching.

Margolin went to Boston College and was the third-string goalie which means he saw zero playing time, so he transferred to Connecticut College in New London, CT. He played all four seasons there stopping pucks for the Camels at the Dayton Ice Arena.

ROSTER

Pavelec will be out for two-to-three weeks. For the Pack, this means goalie Alexander Georgiev is not coming back anytime soon unless a trade is made.

So for the foreseeable future, Brandon Halverson and Chris Nell will have the reigns in goal for the Wolf Pack and of course that changed (see above).

Marek Mazanec ‘s groin injury has not improved as his status from day-to-day has been changed to week-to-week.  Having any kind of groin or hip flexor injury for a goalies makes it impossible to predict when they will stabilize.

On Monday, the Wolf Pack lost red-hot defenseman Ryan Sproul who’s tallied six goals and eight points in his last six games, and nine points in his last eight games, was the recalled d-man by the Rangers after an ex-Pack defenseman, Steven Kampfer, suffered a broken hand. Kampfer is lost to the Rangers for the next four-to-six weeks.

The Pack could look to Sweden for a goalie. Ex-Pack netminder, Johan Holmqvist, came out of retirement to play for Karlskrona HK (Sweden-SHL) who he played for last season.

Holmqvist, 39, nicknamed Homer when he played in Hartford, was traded in the 2002-2003 season for defenseman Lawrence Nycholat, then of the Houston Aeros. Houston would go on to make a deep playoff run and won the Calder Cup that spring. Homer played in all 23 games and earned the Jack Butterfield AHL playoff MVP trophy.

Former Wolf Pack and Sound Tigers goalie, Yann Danis, announced his retirement from the game via Twitter on Tuesday.

Danis played ten games in Bridgeport in 2008-09. He was the Wolf Pack savior in net when Mackenzie Skapski went down with season-ending surgery in 2014-15. Danis compiled a 2.35 GAA in 24 regular season games and helped the Wolf Pack win their way to the conference finals against Manchester before losing to the eventual Calder Cup champions. Danis played in 14 games and had a 2.37 in that playoff year.

It would have been nice if the Canadiens could have found a way for him to play this year. It would have allowed the Quebec native, who resides a half hour from Montreal, to have played in Laval.

Danis and his wife Kayla and their three children were classy people. Best wishes in their future endeavors. Hopefully, Danis stays in the game as goalie coach somewhere.

Caleb Herbert, who played five games with the Wolf Pack earlier this year, was loaned from Greenville to the San Jose Barracuda.

The Sound Tigers picked up veteran defenseman Andre Benoit from Binghamton on loan.

Ex-Pack defenseman, Tommy Hughes, could be in the lineup next Friday for Hershey as he was recalled from South Carolina (ECHL).

Tage Thompson (Orange/UCONN) was returned to San Antonio by St. Louis. Thompson is the son of current Bridgeport head coach and former Wolf Pack, Brent Thompson.

Springfield picked up on winger on loan, Cam Brown. The former University Maine (HE) standout came to the team from Wheeling (ECHL) and goalie Harri Sateri has returned by the parent Florida Panthers.

Henrik Samuelsson, who played in Wolf Pack in training camp, was loaned from Idaho (ECHL) to the Rockford Ice Hogs. Henrik is the second hockey-playing child of Ulf Samuelsson’s four. Samuelsson is an ex-Whaler great, who also played for the Rangers and was also a former Rangers, Wolf Pack, and Avon Old Farms, assistant coach.

Vladimir Denisov, an ex-Pack defenseman, goes from Dynamo Minsk (Belarus-KHL) to SaiPa (Finland-FEL) for the playoffs.

Another ex-Pack, Hannu Pikkarainen, was cut just after Christmas by Jukerit (Finland-FEL) and has signed with Kiekkokopola (Finland Division-2).

Ex-Pack, Akim Aliu, is loaned out to his third European team of the year in IK Pantern (Sweden-Allsvenskan) by Karlskrona HK (Sweden-SHL). His stay was not good registering no points, a minus-7 and 62 PIM in six games.

NEW HAVEN HERITAGE & OLYMPICS

There are still links from the AHL New Haven from 25 years ago or more these tidbits come from fellow AHL writer Pat Williams at the NHL.com.

The Belleville Senators hired a second assistant coach just before Christmas in former New Haven Senators – the first AHL affiliate for Ottawa – in Tony Cimellaro.

He played 15 games the next season when the team has been moved to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (PEI). Cimellaro played junior hockey for the Belleville Bulls (OHL).

Cimellaro has been an assistant the past year and a half in Canadian college hockey with Queen’s University (OUAA).

The other assistant coach for Belleville is Paul Boutilier, a former New Haven Nighthawk (1987-88) who played nine games. He played for five teams that year four with Rangers, nine with the Denver Rangers (IHL), six games with the original Winnipeg Jets and ended the season the AHL Moncton Hawks.

Mike Mersch is another hire who plays for the Ontario Reign. His late father, Michael Sr., played a game for the Nighthawks (1987-88). That counts! Mersch was recalled by the LA Kings on Thursday.

Another New Haven connection at the Olympics is former New Haven Senator Harijs Vitolins, a Latvian native whose is an assistant coach for the OAR team (Olympic Athletes of Russia). He is presently an assistant coach with SKA St. Petersburg (Russia-KHL).

David Leggio, an ex-Sound Tiger is the third goalie for Team USA. He will always be remembered for this fine play of pushing the net off its moorings twice. The first time Bridgeport was facing a 2-on-0 breakaway and then did it again in Austria on a breakaway willingly setting himself up to have a penalty shot taken against him.

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