CANTLON: PACK PREPARE FOR THE END OF THE SEASON 

CANTLON: Pack Prepare For the End of the Season

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

HARTFORD, CT – The Hartford Wolf Pack begin the last month of the regular season with five games remaining on their schedule. Their record sits at the .500 mark at 31-31-5-3. Their last three-games-in-three days starts Friday night with their last visit of the season to the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island to battle the Bruins.

There are also a pair of weekend dates.

Saturday the team plays a team they are undefeated against this season. They take on the league’s top-ranked Lehigh Valley Phantoms at the XL Center at 7 pm. Yale goalie Alex Lyon could be there, but he has been on a recall shuttle for the past month. The Phantoms also feature former UCONN defenseman, David Drake, who picked up a point in AHL debut last week.

Between Providence, Lehigh Valley, and the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins, the Wolf Pack have a combined record of 12-4-1-2.

On Sunday at 5 pm, the Springfield Thunderbirds and the Pack will play their final contest. The Pack is 4-5-1-1 against their I-91 rivals.

The Pack’s combined record against the rest of the division, which includes the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the Charlotte Checkers, the Thunderbirds, and Hershey Bears is 11-20-3-1.

The Pack ends the season with a home-and-home series against the Binghamton Devils next Friday and Saturday.

In roster news, Hartford has signed Evan Jasper to a PTO deal from the team’s ECHL affiliate’s the Greenville Swamp Rabbits. He will most certainly see some playing time this weekend.

In other roster moves, on Thursday, the team signed Princeton Tigers (ECACHL) forward, David Hallisey, a Wethersfield native, to an ATO deal. In one of the surprise programs in NCAA college hockey this season, Hallisey had a career-high 38 points (18 goals and 20 assists) in 36 games. The stats on his four-year career showed he had 37 goals and 81 points in 110 college games.

Hallisey played three years of prep school hockey at Westminster Prep (Simsbury). He has two sisters playing the sport collegiately. Sister Maggie plays with Holy Cross (AHA-W) and his other sister, Taylor, is in the club program at Villanova (ACHA Division-2).

Hallisey is among 137 Division I players to date to sign (26 in the ECACHL) after their college season ended. If you include Division III a total of 164 have signed.

Ty Ronning, who signed his pro deal, is now eligible to come to Hartford after the Vancouver Giants were eliminated in seven games of their playoff series by the Victoria Royals.

Brett Howden, acquired in the Ryan McDonagh deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning and his Moose Jaw Warriors advanced after a tremendous seven-game series with Prince Albert. They will play Swift Current.

In the OHL playoffs, both New York Rangers prospects respective teams advanced to the second round. Sean Day and the Kingston Frontenacs advanced after knocking off North Bay in five games. They are playing the Barrie Colts and find themselves down one game to none as the series is off to a start. Tim Gettinger and his Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, who swept past Saginaw, will play the Owen Sound Attack.

NOTES:

Ex-Pack/CT Whale Christian Thomas has had some season playing with Wilkes Barre/Scranton. He has been a part of three different locker rooms over the last six months playing for Canadian National Team in two tournaments (the Karjala Cup and a gold medal at the Spengler Cup) where he was, of course, representing Canada at the recently completed PyeonChang Olympic Games in South Korea.

“It was an amazing experience to be there. Clearly, my first goal (against) was so special and one of the biggest highlights was coming out for opening ceremonies with all the athletes from Canada. It was so surreal. It was even better than you can imagine. It was so much fun talking and meeting athletes from around the world. It was just such a great experience, truly a dream come true,” commented Thomas who played in Hartford from 2011-2013.

When asked if he still has the puck from that first goal, Thomas replied, “No, I never got that puck. I do have some jerseys and sticks I got, and I can show everyone back home,” remarked Thomas. “It’s also been an interesting season traveling all over the world and so many different locker rooms.

“No questions. It’s been a grind and I really gotta thank the Pittsburgh organization for letting me do it. I had a good tournament with the Karjala and we won everything at the Spengler. You can’t get your hopes up, but when I got that call, I will never forget it. I really feel I’m hitting my stride and wanna to finish strong here and I want, be back here (with Wilkes Barre/Scranton) next year.”

He recently got to hook up with his old teammate, roommate and co-Wolf Pack promo video star Dylan McIlrath in Grand Rapids on a recent road trip.

“We don’t go out there too often it was to see him again. We had a lot of fun and laughs here and its where I got started its fun to play here.”

Former Sacred Heart University Pioneer Justin Danforth was named to the ECHL AAll-Rookie team.

Ex-Pack Nik Latta, who played for a month with Wichita (ECHL), has signed back home with EHC Wolfsburg (Germany-DEL) for next season.

Ex-Wolf Pack and Sound Tiger, Joel Bouchard, for the second year in a row, was named QMJHL Ron Lapointe Coach of the Year with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada.

Congrats to former Wolf Pack defenseman David Urquhart who has been an assistant coach at McGill University in Montreal the past four seasons. On the eve of the IIHF Division II Group B championships, Urquhart was named as the head coach for the Serbian National Team.

Six national teams will be in the competition from April 23-29 in Tilburg, Holland. The teams will include the host Netherlands, Serbia, Australia (featuring Cheshire native, Rob Malloy), China, Iceland, and Belgium.

Urquhart makes his coaching debut in a two pre-tournament games in Belgrade, Serbia on April 12 and then in Zagreb, Croatia on April 17.

The McGill Redmen finished the season with a 34-10 overall record and 22-6 in the OUAA conference where they lost in the national CIAU quarterfinals to the University of Saskatchewan 4-1 in Fredericton, NB. The Canadian college David Johnson University Cup champions are the University of Alberta Golden Bears 4-2 winners over St. Francis Xavier whose first game of the year was against UCONN.

McGill features former Choate Prep (Wallingford) player Max Daigle and current Wolf Pack goalie coach in the same capacity, Eric Raymond.

The NCAA Frozen Four is on tap this weekend in St. Paul, MN the opening matchup is Ohio State against University Minnesota-Duluth and the nightcap the surprising Michigan Wolverines against the ND Fighting Irish.

Quinnipiac head coach, Rand Pecknold, was added as an assistant coach for the US squad at the IIHF Under-18 Division 1 Group A tournament in Chelyabinsk and Magnitogorsk, Russia from April 19-29. Several NHL teams are not sending scouts because of the high level of pollution in the two cities considered two of the most polluted places on planet Earth.

CT college hockey news that the Albertus Magnus Falcons will be starting a Division III men’s program next season (2019-20) and play at the renovated Ralph Walker Skating Rink located on State Street in New Haven. The arena just finished getting a $2.5 million upgrade and is located near Blake Field. A coaching search is underway and the school will become the 33^rd Division III program in New England.

In the 33 includes Trinity College (Hartford), Wesleyan (Middletown) and Connecticut College (New London).

Current club programs at the University of New Haven (West Haven), Southern Connecticut State University (New Haven) and Western Connecticut State University (Danbury) will likely move to D3. It could spawn the birth of a CT conference.

The World Under-18 championships in Division 1 Group B starts in Riga, Latvia. The assistant coach for the host Latvian team is former Beast of New Haven, Herberts Vasiljves.

Several European championships have been decided while others are in the semifinal stages.

The Swedish Hockey League (SHL) are in their Final Four stage with Vaxjo playing Malmo IF, who features ex-Sound Tiger, Rhett Rakhshani. In the other semi, its Djurgarden IF playing Skelleftea AIK with ex-Sound Tigers Mark Katic and former Wolf Pack players Mike Kostka and assistant coach Bert Robertsson.

The HE Rouen Dragons won the French Magnus League title in a sweep of Grenoble capturing their sixth title in 10 years featuring former Salisbury Prep player Phillippe Paquet. Grenoble had the league’s leading scorer ex-Pack Alexandre Giroux and former UCONN defenseman Joonas Kunnas.

MAC Budapest won the MOL Hungarian/Romanian league title in five games over DVTK.

The KHL relegated two teams to the VHL league and will go with just 25 teams for the 2018-19 season.

Jokerit Helsinki (Finland) won the longest KHL playoff game ever in five OT’s over CSKA Moscow 3-2.

HC Viking Talinn won the Estonia league title in a four game sweep of HK Kalev-Valk Tartu.

The short season (20 games) Lithuanian National Hockey League (LNHL) title went to Energija Elektrenai beating Kaunas in a sweep of the best of five series. Energija went 19-1 in the regular season and won all five playoff games.

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