The Admirals have confirmed that restricted free agent forward Ryan Thang will be playing in Germany next season.
Thang debuted with the Admirals after his Notre Dame season ended in 2010. He earned high praise from Coach Lane Lambert early on, and played significant minutes down the stretch and in the 2010 Calder Cup Playoffs.
Thanger had a great shot, and scored some big time goals over his two-plus seasons in Milwaukee. My favorite Thang moment was probably in the 2011 Calder Cup playoffs. In game 5 of the first round series against the Texas Stars, Thang scored at 16:29 of overtime to give the Admirals a 3-2 series lead, with the series then heading back to Milwaukee. He had an open shooting lane on a 3-on-2 rush, and he shot a laser from the right circle that just flat-out beat the goalie. That was also that game that Gabriel Bourque scored with 4.4 second left in the third to force the overtime…. That game was easily one of my top 3 moments since I started covering the team, if not #1 itself. An amazing night in Austin.
So we’ll wish Ryan Thang well on his adventures overseas. And I guess we’ll have to officially retire the FM 102/1 Shake Your Thang cam during the TV timeouts…
Dave talked to Paul Fenton, who could only speak in generalities at the time.
So while we don’t really have any candidates to talk about….I’d like to open up discussion as to what are some characteristics that you would like to see in your new Head Coach?
– Someone with fire in their belly, or someone that’s composed under pressure?
– A former player?
– Someone that’s brutally honest or someone that tries to positively motivate?
Congrats to the Norfolk Admirals for winning the Calder Cup! They swept the Toronto Marlies 4-0 in the series, and the exclamation point in Game 4 was by a 6-1 score.
Tough way for the Marlies to lose Game 3, though.
It stinks, but it is your home rink…..I wonder if that’s the first time that little nook/cranny gave Scrivens a bad bounce.
Former (Milwaukee) Admirals in the series: Kelsey Wilson did not play in the finals, and only played in one game in the entire playoffs, that a 3-2 win over Abbotsford. Cory Conacher had a goal and five assists in the finals, and Brandon Segal had a pair of goals, including a game winner.
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Do you follow capgeek.com? If not, you should. According to them, the Predators signed Kevin Henderson to a two-way one-year contract. But he’s the only one of the Van Flynderson line that is currently under contract.
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I don’t think there will be any shortage of European players on the team next season, but one of them won’t be defenseman Teemu Laakso. One of only two players that played on the 08-09 campaign and were still on the team last year (Scott Ford is the other), Laakso could never stick in the NHL when given the opportunity. After watching other guys pass him on the depth chart, Laakso signed a two-year deal with Severstal of the KHL. Over the years, I felt that when healthy, he was one of our most dependable defensemen. He was prone to a few more unforced errors this season, but still was a very useful piece that the team will need to fill this summer.
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The Predators had until June 1st to sign their 2000 draft picks, or else they would go back into the draft pool this summer. The Preds did elect to sign Swedish forward Patrick Cehlin to an entry level contract. He’s a 5’11 170 pound right winger, who is expected to play his first season in North America this upcoming season.
He won’t be the only Swede coming over….the Preds signed forward Daniel Bang to a two-way one-year contract. Bang has a more size than Cehlin, coming it at 6’3 and 201 pounds. David Poile talked about him in a recent interview at the Preds website, saying “We’ve signed a veteran European player in Daniel Bang to maybe make up for some of what we traded away during the season; who we think, given an opportunity in Training Camp certainly will be close and could play games for us next season.”
Before you get all excited about a line with Bang and Thang…first off, it’s pronounced BAWNG. And second, Thanger doesn’t have a contract right now. He’s a restricted free agent. Will the Preds send him an offer sheet? Will he play overseas instead? We’ll see.
Another Euro-signing…..Finnish defenseman Joonas Jarvinen. David Poile described him as “…a little older, a bit of a late bloomer, but someone who played at the World Championships and played effectively; we think we might have something with Jarvinen.”
You know how we often hear about the learning curve European players have when they play in North America for the first time? I think we’ll be hearing that a lot this year.
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No new news on the Head Coach front. Timing wise, the Kirk Muller announcement came at the end of June, just before rookie development camp. So I’m not going to get antsy until it’s past Summerfest and we don’t have a coach!
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And finally…. mark your calendars for the Admirals garage sale on June 20th and 21st. Get more information here.
And don’t forget to visit the Admirals at Summerfest this year at the Uline Sports Zone. Here is the schedule:
Dave Boehler has a good article at ye olde newspaper with quotes from the coach himself, GM Paul Fenton, and some player reaction too.
I spoke briefly with Fenton yesterday as well.
As great as it would be to know right away who the next coach will be, Fenton is going to be very thorough again this summer as he’s talking with candidates for this job. And why should he do anything different? Nobody can argue with the quality of the candidates that he has hired over the years, as most of them had great success in Milwaukee and are now coaching in the NHL somewhere.
“I don’t have a timetable for that. I’ll go through the same process as I did when I hired Kirk, and when I hired Lane, and when we hired Claude, and I hired Peter, and I hired Todd Richards….they’re all very fortunate to all come through a great system, great city, great American League city, and a franchise that continues to have success. I’ll go through the same process so that we’ll be able to pick a good coach to fit for Milwaukee.”
If you are a fan who likes the ‘big picture’, I’m sure whoever we get will be great. If you like knowing the news before it breaks, good luck handicapping candidates. The information leaks of the Ian Herbers hiring in Canada? Don’t expect them for this job. I was driving to a wedding in Stoughton when Jason Karnosky texted me the news that Kirk was coming last summer.
But I can tell you who one of the candidates will be, and who one of the candidates won’t be.
Assistant coach Stan Drulia will most definitely be in the mix.
“I will interview Stan,” Fenton says. “He’s been a head coach, he’s now got his foot in the door and I’ve gotten to know him a little bit, and I’d give him consideration for the job right now. I thought he did a very good job (last season), especially coming into a different situation — it isn’t often that you lose your minor league coach to an NHL team as quickly as we did. For him to be able to come in and step away from his duties as a head coach (in the ECHL) and familiarize himself with our organization, I thought he did an admirable job.”
A few readers have suggested that Director of Player Development Marty Gelinas would be a great fit for the position, having a previous relationship with all of the players in the system, and even a few games of assistant coaching experience this past season in the first few games after Kirk left.
I asked Fenton if he knows if Marty has any interest in changing career paths.
“He doesn’t. No, I’ve already spoken with Marty. He has no interest in it.”
So while I’m sure this isn’t something that Paul planned on being on his summer to-do list, I’m sure that when all is said and done, we’ll have another top-notch coach in town. But now we play the waiting game.
Got the confirmation from the Admirals this morning, and I imagine there will be more fanfare later on from the University of Alberta…but Coach Ian Herbers is heading back to his Alma Mater to coach.
“Days after a source on the University of Alberta Golden Bears hockey head coach selection committee quashed rumours Ian Herbers would be the team’s next bench boss, the Milwaukee Admirals head coach will in fact take over the Bears coaching reins.
When contacted Sunday night via text message to confirm rumours that Herbers had been offered the job, Alberta general manager Stan Marple vehemently denied Herbers’ candidacy, let alone him being offered the job.
“He has not been interviewed nor did he apply…he is coaching in the AHL next year why would he come here?” Marple said via text message.
There are no sources cited on this new information, and I haven’t seen a press release of any kind yet. So on the scale of officialness, I’m inclined to rank it a bit below a ‘confirmation’ and somewhere above a ‘rumor’. But the author tweeted that there should be an official announcement tomorrow…..so we’ll see.
I have reached out to the Admirals, and they are unable to confirm anything at this time.
However, let’s say for a moment that it is 100% true. Herbie will be going back to coach at a place where both he and GM Marple played together from ’89 to ’92. And the Admirals will be looking for a new coach this summer. Maybe Stan Drulia will be the guy for the job? Maybe they’ll look outside the organization again? All kinds of speculation for another time on another day.
And if this is all 100% true, and if I’m Evan Daum (the writer for the newspaper), I’m pissed off right now. Like, flames….FLAMES….on the side of my face…. pissed off. Here’s the thing: I don’t like being lied to. And that wasn’t one of those Fleetwood Mac sweet little lies… It was one of those lies that would be right at home in a political commercial funded by a Super-PAC.
It was the GM that said it too!
I get it….they’re going through their HR process and they’ll announce it when they’re ready to announce it. They don’t want stuff getting leaked ahead of time. Fine. Great. Nothing unusual there at all. But there are ways to accomplish that without jilting a media member that had the courtesy of coming to them first before publishing a story. Not every writer out there does that, and Marple should appreciate the ones that do.
Don’t want to give him a comment? Tell him, “We have no comment.” I’d rather hear that than find out later that the comment they did provide was a large heap of bull-pucky. Tell him to sit on the story. Tell him to expect an announcement in 48 hours. Marple doesn’t have to say anything at all, and that’s why him going out of his way to be deceitful gets me fired up.
I hope there comes a day when Daum gets a pretty amazing scoop…and Marple asks him to sit on the story…..and Daum tells him “No.”
Meanwhile some play-by-play guy for a Junior A team in Fort McMurray tweeted on Sunday sans source that Ian was offered the job, and is gloating gloating gloating about being (reportedly) right today on the tweet machine. Because nothing says “credibility” like a guy who points to himself as if to say “See? I’m right!” and tries to rub it in the faces of people who actually would have preferred to see a source to back it up.
Sources tell TPS that former Alberta Golden Bear defenceman Ian Herbers could be the team’s next head coach. This would be an interesting move on Herbers part who became the head coach in Milwaukee this year when Kirk Muller was hired by the Carolina Hurricanes as head coach.
Would he leave a pro head coaching job to take on in the CIS? Even if it is one of the most coveted jobs in university hockey and provides the new coach with more time to spend on hockey with the creation of a General Manager position.
More time to spend on hockey? More than what, the 12 month job he currently has? And is it really one of the most coveted jobs in University hockey? Really?
So that was posted on Sunday evening. About an hour later, probably after some investigating and you know, attempts at fact finding….stuff like that…..the Edmonton Journal had this sparkling headline…
Here are two quotes from that story that are worth your time.
Ian Herbers, head coach of the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League and former University of Alberta Golden Bears hockey player, hasn’t been offered the Bears head coaching position nor was he even interviewed.
A source on the eight-man hiring committee confirmed Sunday night that Herbers didn’t apply for the vacant Alberta coaching position, which opened up when former head coach Stan Marple became the program’s first general manager in late March.
And taking a moment to take some shots at blogs and social media….
The Pipeline Show had speculated earlier Sunday night that Herbers could be the Bears next coach, while Ft. McMurray Oil Barons play-by-play man Tyler King had tweeted that Herbers had already been offered the job.
It may still happen, and it’s certainly an interesting development in our quiet minor league off-season. But there’s nothing to see here yet.
With the first two rounds of the American Hockey League playoffs in the books, somehow the four remaining teams, each a top-two seeded finisher in each conference, managed to buck recent trends and advance to the conference finals.
The result is a pair of matchups second to none which will decide who will play for the Calder Cup. Another special note, perennial playoff favorites like Hershey, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Milwaukee and Chicago have all bowed out in the first two rounds, leaving each remaining team pursing its first ever league title.
Here are my previews for the AHL conference finals:
Western Conference: 1) Oklahoma City Barons (45-22-4-5–99 points) vs. 2) Toronto Marlies (44-24-5-3–96 points)
Oklahoma City and Toronto both represent the Western Conference’s elite teams this season as both clubs separated themselves from the pack in the early going and never really looked back. Ironically, both teams took the same rout in the second round to get to this point, losing their first game at home before sweeping through the next four games, winning three in a row on the road.
Lead by red hot Mark Arcobello the Barons have a slight edge offensely, but Marlies goaltender Ben Scrivens has been the playoffs best netminder so far.
My prediction:In a hotly contested seven-game series, I have Toronto upsetting Oklahoma City.
Eastern Conference: 1) Norfolk Admirals (55-18-1-2–113 points) vs. 2) St. John’s IceCaps (43-25-5-3–94 points)
Much like the Western Conference final, the Eastern Conference features another major travel adventure, in this case between the conference’s two furthest separated clubs. Like their geography, these were the two clubs that separated themselves the furthest in their own divisions, as Norfolk built up a 18-point cushion on the Penguins in the East Division thanks to an AHL record 28-game winning streak to close the year, while St. John’s coasted in Atlantic Division posting an 11-point edge over Manchester.
But unlike their Western counterparts, neither squad has been overly convincing in the victories en route to the conference finals. Led by AHL star Alexandre Picard and rookie Alex Killorn, the “other” Admirals feature superior offensive talent. Meanwhile, the first-year IceCaps feature depth in scoring behind leaders Brock Trotter and Aaron Gagnon.
My prediction:I think this will be the series that Norfolk pulls away on its path to the Calder Cup, dumping St. John’s in five games.
So Roundtable . . . Who do see winning their respective conferences and why?
Continuing our look at some pending restricted free agents…let’s talk about Ryan Flynn.
The case for Flynn: Took some huge steps forward defensively, and was a big part of the some shut-down lines that included Mark Van Guilder and various left wingers….Kevin Henderson completed the trio down the stretch.
The case against Flynn: Through college (Minnesota) and his pro career, has never scored ten goals in a season. With his skill-set, is there a higher ceiling for him offensively, or are we probably at the ceiling?
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