Wranglers Report: Herd sending head coach to all-star game
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Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againNow a rising talent in the coaching ranks, focused on racking up wins rather than roughing up opponents, Love just scored his first invite to the AHL All-Star Classic. The 38-year-old will be behind the bench for the Pacific Division at the mid-season showcase. “Definitely never as a player, I can tell you that,” cracked Love, who totalled six goals and 800-plus penalty minutes during his five-season stint as a minor-league winger. “I don’t think they have fisticuffs in the all-star game but if they did, I might have been able to represent the division I played in along the way. “I’m just excited to be around all that talent and all the deserving people who will be a part of that event.”Article content The 2023 AHL All-Star Classic, featuring both a skills competition and three-on-three tournament, is slated for Feb. 5-6 in Laval, Que. While the player rosters won’t be revealed until next week, Love’s coaching nod was sealed on New Year’s Eve, when the Wranglers — at the tail end of a three-games-in-four-nights roadie — gutted out a 3-1 victory over the division rival Ontario Reign and climbed to top perch in the Pacific. “We were sitting in the coaches’ room prior to that game and Joe Cirella leaned over and just said, ‘Hey, do you know what happens if we win tonight?’ ” Love relayed. “I don’t pay much attention to that stuff but he said, ‘If we win, you’re not getting any time off for the rest of the way here.’ So it’s in the back of your mind, obviously, throughout the game but I was just proud of our effort — win, lose or tie — that night, in terms of the schedule we had coming out of the six days off and travel complications and whatnot. We played a heck of a hockey game that night.”Article content That has, more often than not, been the case. The Flames’ farm-clubbers are, after all, tied for second in the AHL’s overall standings. “It’s the players that put all the work in,” Love stressed. “They found ways to turn our below-average start into a position where I’m able to represent our division, so it’s really a credit to them.”The Wranglers lost five of the first seven on the schedule. They’re 20-3-1 since then. Whoa. Their stalwart netminder, Dustin Wolf, leads the loop in both wins and shutouts. He was perfect again in Wednesday’s 3-0 blanking of the Abbotsford Canucks. Jakob Pelletier, Matthew Phillips and Connor Zary are each averaging north of a point-per-game as the pace-setters for AHL’s highest-scoring attack.Article content On several occasions, they’ve wished a buddy the best of luck as they’ve packed up their gear for a stint with the Flames. Radim Zohorna is the only current call-up.“It’s no different than the Flames,” Love said. “The philosophy on both clubs is, first and foremost, your job here in this organization and to advance your career in order to play for Darryl and his staff, you have to be able to play a 200-foot game. I’ve seen some growth in a lot of our players there, and probably more so the new players coming in and having that understanding that it is an important component to our organization is learning that side of the game. But by no means is that supposed to take away from your offensive creativity. I mean, I believe we were No. 1 or No. 2 in the league in goals for through 30 games, so what that tells you is if you check the game properly, you get the puck back and then you use your creativity to score goals.Article content “Our goaltending, both Wolf and Dansk, have really stepped up their play over the last couple of months,” he continued. “Our special teams has been very strong, and that’s won us a lot of hockey games. If our power-play struggles, our penalty-kill steps up, and vice versa. And then I think when guys have gone quiet, we’ve had other guys step up offensively to put the puck in the net. I think that’s a good sign for any team that you have some depth. I think all that has been key so far.”Love has some say in that, along with the AHL’s hockey-ops honchos. There are 10 squads in the Pacific, so this will certainly be a case of more strong candidates than spots available.Article content “There’s plenty of good options in our division and then if you look at our group, we have some guys having some big years for us so far — Wolf, Phillips, DeSimone, Pelletier, Zary, even Poirier as a young player … ” Love said. “There are a lot of options there. It’ll just be a matter of what the league decides in nailing those numbers down.”Tuesday — Bakersfield Condors at Wranglers, 7 p.m.Wranglers workhorse Dustin Wolf was saluted as the AHL’s goaltender of the month for December. He celebrated with a 29-save goose-egg in Wednesday’s 3-0 silencing of the Abbotsford Canucks. The 21-year-old Wolf currently leads the league in wins and shutouts and ranks second in goals-against average and save percentage . Impressive.Jakob Pelletier is nearing the 100-game plateau. The 21-year-old left-winger could hit triple digits in another category first. The second-year pro has so far collected 96 points — a mix of 42 goals and 54 assists — in 97 career loggings at the AHL level. Pelletier will hit both milestones soon, unless he instead earns a call-up from the Flames. He must be a top candidate.
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Wranglers Report: Herd sending head coach to all-star gameWhile the player rosters won’t be revealed until next week, Mitch Love’s coaching nod was sealed on New Year’s Eve.
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