New York Rangers: Why getting the AHL right is so important

As part of the rebuilding process, the New York Rangers need to properly design an AHL program in Hartford that can graduate NHL ready talent. For far too long, the Wolf Pack were just a collection of talent and was not successful.

Over the last six years since the Hartford Wolf Pack were rebranded from a two-year stint as the Connecticut Whale,  the New York Rangers’ AHL affiliate has only qualified for the postseason once and failed to help produce NHL ready talent in the process. Granted, there was not a lot of talent to work with while the Rangers were chasing the Stanley Cup, but it’s a new day in Connecticut.

For the Rangers rebuild to properly develop over the next several years, prospects need a developmental league to learn. Like forward Chris Kreider said last season about Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil, “We have a developmental league, it’s called the AHL, they’re here because they’re ready to compete.”

There is a general consensus that the Rangers are heading in the right direction because of the players the organization has selected in the entry draft or acquired through trades.

Many can rattle off the names: K’Andre Miller, Vitali Kravtsov, Adam Fox, Nils Lundkvist, Yegor Rykov, Tarmo Reunanen, Joey Keane, Ty Ronning, Igor Shesterkin, Libor Hajek, Ryan Lindgren and several more to come this summer following next week’s entry draft.

However, it’s almost outright impossible for amateur talent to jump from either junior hockey or even a top-flight European league right to the NHL. These players are going to need further seasoning before they ever get a whiff of the bright lights at Madison Square Garden for an NHL game.

The model

There are several organizational strategies that the Tampa Bay Lightning developed this decade to build the most talented roster in the entire league on paper. Most important, a team that was built mostly through the draft needs to be developed properly and taught how to play a style similar to the NHL level program.

This was a major talking point last season when the Rangers called up Hajek for five games before he injured his shoulder. MSG Network hammered home the point that because there was little structure at the AHL level, it might be easier for Hajek to find his footing with the Rangers since there is so much structure.

This should not be the case. While the Rangers’ AHL affiliate wasn’t stockpiled with future NHL talent like the Lightning’s Syracuse Crunch, there’s still a lesson to be learned. Tampa Bay’s AHL team is designed to graduate NHL ready talent in a short period of time. It’s how the NHL team continually finds some cheaper depth to fill out its lineup.

A majority of Tampa’s homegrown talent went through Central New York before getting to Florida and it’s something that the Rangers need to be mindful of. The AHL isn’t just a taxi squad for the 13th forward or seventh defenseman in case of an injury. There needs to teaching and growth before a player ever gets to David Quinn’s locker room.

Drury and the coach

As part of newly hired president John Davidson‘s vision for the organization, he wants to dramatically overhaul the AHL program and coaching throughout the franchise according to Larry Brooks of the New York Post. In addition, Brooks also said this was the reason that the team had not yet hired a replacement for Ken Gernander, the fired head coach.

As part of this plan, Davidson envisions a new system of developmental coaches responsible for prospects in a specific region.  When he spoke to the New York Post, he specifically referenced having a coach based in Europe to check in with prospects during the course of their seasons and guide them along with their progress in a way that the Rangers want.

As the assistant G.M. of the Rangers and G.M. for Hartford, Chris Drury and head man Jeff Gorton are conducting preliminary interviews with potential candidates according to Davidson.

Instead of just being a place to bury contracts and third and fourth-round picks to just age out, Davidson envisions the AHL affiliate as a breeding ground for future NHLers like it was while he was President of the Columbus Blue Jackets. He cited the Erie team that won the AHL championship in 2015 with Zach Werenski, Josh Anderson and Oliver Bjorkstrand as the model.

He’s looking for a team with a mix of veterans that could be called up to the NHL in an emergency as well as the shiny new prospects trying to find their footing as professionals.

Of that list of prospects, it’s expected that the great majority will at least start this season at the AHL level. With so much of the team’s future success tied up in the production of said prospects, it’s of the utmost importance that they have a positive learning environment that isn’t a breeding ground for bad habits.

It might be easy to account for Lias Andersson’s developmental struggles as being tied to the AHL program’s failures, but it’s a fair assessment. Someone like the Swede has succeeded at every level of hockey he’s played, there’s no reason he should look this out of place at the NHL level aside from a failure at the developmental level.

To set the long-term success of the Rangers on the right course, the AHL program can no longer be dramatically overlooked. Instead, it needs to be a classroom for NHL hockey played on a smaller scale.