Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Twenty years in the past, two gamers joined the Philadelphia Phantoms, helped to make them a Calder Cup championship, and shortly grew to become constructing blocks for the dad or mum Philadelphia Flyers.
You’d be hard-pressed to discover a higher story of the co-existence of creating 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 total, Richards twenty fourth – and had been desperate to get the 20-year-old forwards essential professional growth expertise within the AHL.
Carter led the Phantoms with 12 objectives and 23 factors in 21 playoff video games. Richards contributed 15 factors in 14 video games. Philadelphia received the Calder Cup in a four-game sweep of Chicago – culminating in entrance of 20,103 followers on the Wachovia Heart, nonetheless the most important postseason crowd in AHL historical past.
Richards would later function captain of the Flyers for 3 years. He and Carter led the crew to the Stanley Cup Closing in 2010. They’d 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 crew, which moved from Philadelphia to Glens Falls in 2009 and on to Allentown in 2014, isn’t the powerhouse that the 2005 crew was; the workmanlike group received 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 affect on Philadelphia’s long-term outlook.
And again in 2005, the Flyers had simply come inside a win of reaching the Stanley Cup Closing a yr earlier. They went on to achieve the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2006, bottomed out for one season, after which had put themselves again into the Stanley Cup Closing by 2010. The Flyers of immediately, nonetheless seeking to kind out their teaching employees 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 may and may have a substantial affect on Philadelphia’s long-term outlook. Emil Andrae, a second-round choose by the Flyers in 2020, performed 42 NHL video games this season and appears each bit like a long-term match with the NHL crew. Rodrigo Ābols, Helge Grans and Jacob Gaucher made their NHL debuts with Philadelphia this season. continues his growth on the Lehigh Valley blue line. Nikita Grebenkin, acquired in a March cope with the Toronto Maple Leafs, has proven appreciable promise as effectively.
After which, 20 years after Carter and Richards, there are forwards Jett Luchanko and Alex Bump. One is an 18-year-old first-round choose from final yr’s NHL Draft. The opposite is a 21-year-old fifth-rounder from the 2022 draft class who’s taking part in like somebody chosen a lot greater.
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 objectives, 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 received a nationwide championship at Western Michigan College final month, main his crew with 23 objectives and 47 factors in 42 video games. Since turning professional, the 21-year-old had one objective and two assists in two fast regular-season appearances with the Phantoms earlier than including two extra objectives within the playoffs up to now.
Luchanko and Bump are attempting to absorb as a lot as doable on this postseason run. It’s by no means almost 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 Heart only a quick commute from Philadelphia, in addition they play in entrance of a giant contingent of Flyers administration nightly. Participant growth has come a good distance within the final 20 years, with intensive coaching plans, growth and expertise coaches, crew cooks, and a facility just like the one in Allentown that’s basically only a scaled-down model of an NHL constructing with all the sources that entails.
The Flyers group works to ease that transition to the professional sport, and Bump says that this adjustment has gone easily.
“One of the best sort of hockey,” Bump mentioned of the playoffs. “The blokes within the locker room are ensuring I do know what I must 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 searching for me.”
There’s additionally the affable, easy-to-talk-to head coach Ian Laperriere, a former seventh-round draft choose 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 put up in 2021. Two younger gamers – one nonetheless an adolescent – can study a factor or two from somebody like that.
“A participant’s coach, for certain,” Bump mentioned of Laperriere. “He will get it. He’s been via it. He is aware of what it’s prefer to be a younger man and play in professional hockey. Any errors I make, he’s there to appropriate it so it received’t occur once more. He’s simply been there for me after I want one thing.”
Luchanko has had loads to absorb 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 may be his ongoing schooling 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 rather 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. Choices can be made then, however actually every part that occurs now with the Phantoms will go into figuring out the rapid 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 generally is a championship and a protracted NHL profession forward.
On the American Hockey League beat for 20 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.
