Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
A 30th birthday is a major one for just about anybody, and it brings with it the potential for all sorts of life changes.
Christian Wolanin knows that.
Wolanin, who turned 30 last March, won a Calder Cup championship, got married, faced a reckoning of his hockey future, and eventually landed a contract with one of the AHL’s top teams.
Those swings in fortune shaped life for Wolanin in 2025.
Last January 4, the Abbotsford Canucks found themselves stalled in the Pacific Division standings and feeling the sting of a 6-2 thumping at the hands of the Laval Rocket. A post-game, players-only meeting followed. Wolanin, then a key part of Abbotsford’s leadership group, and his teammates found themselves in danger of slipping out of contention. Instead they regrouped, went 30-9-1-1 the rest of the regular season, and then fought their way through five rounds of the Calder Cup Playoffs.
By the time June 23 arrived, a team that was floundering in January had become Calder Cup champions. Wolanin played a major role in that surge, too. He had delivered a goal and 27 assists in his final 41 regular-season games. Then came 10 more points (two goals, eight assists) in 17 playoff contests.
Going into free agency, surely Wolanin could expect a number of excellent offers for 2025-26 and maybe even beyond. He was a two-time AHL All-Star, and won the Eddie Shore Award as the AHL’s outstanding defensemen in 2022-23. Add in 86 NHL regular-season games as an easy plug-and-play recall option for a team. And now he had a Calder Cup to his name.
Everyone loves a winner.
Except it didn’t happen.
July came and went. So did August. September, too. Nothing.
Wolanin is frank about the situation.
“You don’t really expect it to go like that after winning, right?” said Wolanin, who had offseason surgery to repair a sports hernia. “There’s not a lot of businesses where you can go backwards after having success.”
The ripple effect for jobs in pro hockey is a very real one. One player signs somewhere, and the spin-off results can impact several other players both here in North America and overseas. All the while, Wolanin still had to stay in top condition just in case a phone call did come from a general manager out there. Basing himself in the Los Angeles area in the offseason, he skated alongside fellow free agents Chase De Leo and Matt Nieto. That meant a 90-minute commute to Toyota Sports Performance Center, the practice facility for the Los Angeles Kings and Ontario Reign.
It was a long way from playoff hockey and winning a championship.
“It makes you appreciate when you do have a team because that grind is no joke,” Wolanin admitted. “I guess it answers the question how much you really love the game.”
Still, he had plenty of joy to carry him through those long commutes. For one, he got married.
Now he just needed a job, as summer slipped into the fall months and nothing came his way.
“You just try to understand the situation,” Wolanin said. “It was kind of tough for my wife (Emily) and I just sitting at home jobless. I’ve been through a lot of adversity, humbly, and I like to think that I’ve always come out on the better half of things.”
Finally his fortune changed Nov. 20. That’s when the Providence Bruins brought him on a professional tryout. Injuries had hit the Boston Bruins, which meant that Providence found itself in need of immediate help. Not a full contract, but beggars can’t be choosers, of course. And Providence is a prime landing spot for any player in the AHL.
It had been a wait, but a worthwhile one.
“I was more than thankful to get a call from a high-end team with a great culture,” Wolanin said, “and they were already winning games. So, it kind of made my job easy to just come in and try to contribute and facilitate and just keep them winning.”
Wolanin’s P-Bruins debut came quickly. Two nights after signing, he was on the ice in Providence for a clash with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. In his second game, a 5-1 win at Toronto on Nov. 26, he supplied four assists. Then a two-assist night at Belleville, one of his former stops, followed, and he quickly became a mainstay on the Providence back end.
The Bruins have come away happy with the match as well, signing Wolanin on Dec. 7 to a standard AHL player’s contract for the rest of the season.
“He fits perfectly into what we need and who we need,” head coach Ryan Mougenel said. “And there’s opportunity for him here, for sure.”
At 22-6-1-0 (.776), the Bruins have the best record in the Eastern Conference. Wolanin is able to move the puck out of trouble as well as distribute it. He can boost any power play, and Providence ranks fifth in the AHL on the man-advantage at 25.3 percent. One of Wolanin’s best strengths is his ability to create offensively but to do so with patience and poise. He doesn’t force plays unnecessarily.
“He’s been as advertised,” Mougenel continued. “I’ve been following his career for quite a while, so I’ve always kind of been a fan. He’s really giving us a different kind of dynamic back there. He sees plays before they’re there. He’s calm, he’s steady, he’s full of life. And he’s been coached by some really good coaches. I know Todd McLellan’s had a strong influence on him, and I’m a little bit of a disciple of Todd’s.”
Now that Wolanin is settled in with Providence, it would be easy to forget what his situation was like just six weeks ago. He has not.
“I’m sitting here acting like it was all sunshine and rainbows, and it wasn’t,” Wolanin acknowledged. “I was getting impatient a little bit, getting a little frustrated with the situation. But you find out how much you really love the game when you’re airing out your own gear in your trunk of your car.
“It just tests your will.”
Now Wolanin is back in the game, and he has a chance to make another charge for the Calder Cup.
“As much as it was frustrating and a little bit confusing,” Wolanin said, “I’m more than thankful to end up in a spot like this with a great group of guys.
“I think the one thing I came out of it with is that I love this game, and I’ll do anything to keep playing.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.