2002-2004 Seasons

2002-03 was a season of change for the Wolf Pack, and the newness began in the coach's office. The Rangers replaced Paddock and Busniuk with Ryan McGill as head coach and Nick Fotiu as his assistant. McGill was fresh off a victory in the Memorial Cup with the Kootenay Ice of the Western Hockey League, and Fotiu a former long-time Ranger and Hartford Whaler. The cast of characters on the ice was largely new as well, and the new crew meshed well in the early season. After going 12-6-4-2 in their first 24 games, though, the club started to experience some difficulties. A rash of injuries in both Hartford and New York impacted the Wolf Pack's lineup, and the parent club was able to pick up some marquee players in trades by surrendering some individuals who had been part of the Pack's core. Still, McGill and Co. kept the ship sailing straight, and Hartford again made the AHL's postseason. This time, though, it was in a best-of-three qualifying-round series, and their opponent was a scrappy Springfield Falcon club. The Wolf Pack knew that there was little margin for error in such a short series, but they still found themselves playing from behind when they could least afford to. After falling behind 3-0 in back-to-back contests, the Pack dominated the late going of both games but could not climb all the way back. They were stunned to find their postseason over almost before it began.

That spring brought further personnel shuffling, as Coates moved on to a position with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks as Senior Vice-President of Business Operations. Jim Schoenfeld, a veteran of nearly 600 games as an NHL coach and over 700 contests as a player, took over as Wolf Pack G.M. after a year as an assistant coach with the Rangers. The combination of Schoenfeld in the executive chair and McGill and Fotiu back for a second season behind the bench proved to be potent, as the Pack reeled off a season that nearly equaled the lofty heights reached by the 1999-2000 squad.
The team got off to an outstanding start, going 8-0-3-1 in its first 12 games, and despite being hit by an avalanche of recalls for most of the season, consistently stayed atop the Atlantic Division. In contrast to the previous year, the team was hardly an offensive juggernaut, with Chad Wiseman’s 25 goals and 52 points topping the players who spent the bulk of the year with the Pack. Defensively, though, the team was a world-beater, led by an unlikely hero in goaltender Jason LaBarbera. A fourth-year pro who had spent much of his first two years in the ECHL and had never been a number-one man in the AHL until late in 2002-03, LaBarbera was slated to battle for the backup job in Hartford until 2001 Ranger first-round pick Dan Blackburn suffered a shoulder injury during offseason workouts. LaBarbera seized the opportunity and not only provided the Pack with a reliable go-to guy in net, but turned in a record-setting season.

No AHL backstop in the previous 67 years of league play had registered more than nine shutouts in a season, and LaBarbera surpassed that in mid-February. He finished with 13 whitewashes, to go along with 34 wins, a 1.59 goals-against average and a 93.6% save percentage, all new franchise records. That earned the former Western Hockey Leaguer AHL MVP honors, plus the Baz Bastien Trophy as the league’s top goaltender.

A flurry of trade-deadline moves by the Rangers helped round out the Wolf Pack’s roster for the playoffs, and one acquisition, winger Jozef Balej, proved to be particularly key. He played in only five regular season games for the Pack, but established himself as the team’s top offensive force in the postseason. The Slovakian import would score nine goals, including four game-winners, and add seven assists for 16 points in 16 playoff contests, as the Wolf Pack treated the fans of Hartford to another exciting playoff run.

The club finished the regular season 7-2-1 in their last 10 regular season tilts to amass 44 wins and 102 points and grab the top seed in the Eastern Conference. They fairly breezed through the first two rounds, losing only one of nine games on the way to ousting Portland and Worcester. After a second-round sweep over the IceCats, the Pack had a 12-day layoff before the beginning of their Conference Final matchup with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and the club could never quite regain its previous sharpness.

The series with the Penguins still turned out to be a classic, though, the third seven-gamer in Wolf Pack history. The two teams split the first two games in Wilkes-Barre, and then the Pack took a two-games-to-one lead with a 3-2 home win in Game Three. The Penguins rebounded to win Game Four, 5-4, and then took the next contest 3-2 in overtime, forcing the Wolf Pack into a must-win situation on the road in Game Six. This time it was the Pack’s turn to fight back, as they disappointed a sellout crowd at the Wachovia Arena in Wilkes-Barre with a 4-1 victory, setting up a climactic Game Seven, the very next night at the Hartford Civic Center. While the Wolf Pack had won their first two trips to Game Seven in team history, they were not so lucky this time. The game was scoreless through the first two periods, before the two clubs traded goals within a span of 1:49 near the midpoint of the third. The tension mounted as the contest headed into sudden-death, and as so often happens, the winner came out of nowhere on a seemingly innocent play. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s Colby Armstrong intercepted a Wolf Pack clearing attempt along the boards and simply threw it at the net. Matt Murley, with his back to the cage, deflected the heave and it eluded a stunned LaBarbera, sending the Penguins to the Calder Cup Finals and the Wolf Pack to a summer of pride about an excellent season, but also of disappointment in not achieving their final goal.