Late yesterday, the Rangers fired their AHL coaching staff, relieving head coach Grant Potulny and assistants Jamie Tardif and Paul Mara of their duties. Potulny took over for Kris Knoblauch in 2024 after he departed for Edmonton, coaching the Hartford Wolf Pack to a combined 56-71-17 record over two seasons. Player development and AHL success are clearly on Chris Drury’s mind, having fired Jed Ortmeyer two days prior. As per usual, I have thoughts.
1. The Hartford Wolf Pack have been a disaster area for quite some time now, having made the playoffs just three times since they rebranded back to the Wolf Pack in 2013. That run spans four coaches: Potulny, Knoblauch, Keith McCambride, and Ken Gernander. Team and player quality is certainly a problem that the coaches can’t really predict, but the issue is far beyond team success.
Many of these issues predate Chris Drury as GM of the Rangers and Ryan Martin as GM of the Wolf Pack. That said, the Wolf Pack have been toxic since at least Drury’s run as GM of the Pack, which ended when he was promoted to GM of the Rangers.
2. It’s easy to pin this on Drury as another failed coaching hire. But I think that’s lazy analysis. After all, he did hire Kris Knoblauch previously. Blind squirrel finds a nut, but I think this is a larger organizational issue more than a coaching issue.
The Wolf Pack used to be regular playoff contenders until around 2009, Gernander’s second season as coach. Since then it’s been early exits or missing the playoffs outright. The Pack last won the Calder cup in 2000, which was also the last time they even made it past the Conference Finals.
That 1999-2000 team was comprised mostly of 4A players with few prospects. Meanwhile most recent teams have been mostly prospects of varying quality with some veterans sprinkled in.
3. That is part of the problem. Every club has to make a decision with their AHL team. Most organizations set up their AHL clubs in one of two ways: Prospect factory for the NHL club, or perennial contender. The Rangers do neither. They haven’t really developed many high end talents through Hartford, though they do excel at developing bottom six forwards. As noted above, they clearly aren’t winning anything either.
In fact, there’s a strong argument that the entire AHL organization is toxic. There are very public examples of Drury, when he was GM, calling out players and prospects for whatever reason. Vitali Kravtsov and Lias Andersson were two of the bigger names to receive such treatment.
4. Much like how the Rangers need to be rebuilt, Hartford does as well. But many of the doubts facing the Rangers also face the Wolf Pack, specifically the man running the show. Though Drury is GM of the Rangers and not the Wolf Pack, Ryan Martin has not been good in his role either. Martin was also pretty rough when he was Assistant GM in Detroit and running Grand Rapids.
Martin, by the way, took over Hartford’s GM duties for the 2021-2022 season after Drury took over Rangers GM duties.
Fans don’t trust Martin the same way they don’t trust Drury, though perhaps not nearly as vocal.
5. A new coaching staff isn’t going to change anything in Hartford unless, like with the Rangers, there’s an organizational shift somewhere. If the organization wants this team to be a Calder Cup contender, then they need to go out and sign skill players that score in the AHL but aren’t NHL players. Many of the scoring leaders in the AHL are high ceiling picks that just didn’t pan out or guys who would be 4L players in the NHL but score in the AHL (Alex Belzile).
The issue with the Rangers is they want to develop the prospects, but fail to do so. Thus Hartford suffers.
The coaching staff may be gone, but the issues with Hartford aren’t going to magically disappear any time soon.