2006-2008 Seasons

The Pack led into their 10th-anniversary 2006-07 season with another change to the coaching staff, as Ulf Samuelsson returned to the NHL ranks as an assistant with the Phoenix Coyotes. Moving into his slot alongside fellow assistant Ken Gernander was former long-time NHL defenseman J.J. Daigneault.

That 2006-07 campaign saw the Wolf Pack get off to an uncharacteristically slow start. Plagued by scoring difficulties, a team that was even younger than the previous year’s edition won only one of its first seven games and five of its first seventeen. Around Thanksgiving weekend, however, rookie Ryan Callahan began to emerge as an offensive force, and the Pack started to turn games that had been one-goal losses into tight wins. Callahan reeled off a team-record eight-game goal-scoring streak from late November through mid-December, and a five-game winning skein for the team started Jim Schoenfeld’s club on a steady rise.

The Wolf Pack were still in last place in the Atlantic Division as late as the Christmas holiday, but starting New Year’s Eve they strung together a 12-1-1-0 run. That hot streak catapulted them all the way from the division basement to contending for first place.

Callahan would continue sniping goals at a regular clip, and even notched the game-winning goal for the Planet USA side in the 2007 AHL All-Star game in Toronto, with only three seconds left in the annual showcase contest. Just prior to the All-Star Classic, Callahan’s Wolf Pack teammate, and ex-Junior teammate, defenseman Dan Girardi, who was to have opposed him for the Canadian team, would earn a callup to the Rangers that would last the rest of the season. Callahan would join him just over a month later, and those two youngsters would make strong contributions to the parent club’s playoff push, and to the first Ranger playoff series triumph since 1997.

Even with losing those two key young stalwarts, though, the Wolf Pack’s confidence was not shaken. Fellow young guns like Nigel Dawes, Brandon Dubinsky, Dane Byers, Lauri Korpikoski and others were able to ensure that the team sustained the momentum it had built since the turn of the new year. The Pack finished the regular season with only three regulation losses in their last 12 games (8-3-0-1) and compiled another glittering record, ending up 47-29-3-1 for 98 points and in second place in the Atlantic.

The playoffs began with yet another exciting series that went the limit, but this time the Wolf Pack would find themselves on the wrong end. The matchup was with their Rhode Island arch-rivals the Providence Bruins, the fourth all-time playoff meeting between the two clubs but the first since 2001.

The Pack and Bruins split the first two games in Hartford, sending the series to Providence for three straight. The Wolf Pack had been dynamite on the road all year, going 25-15-0 during the regular season, and they carried that over into the postseason. The Pack won two of the three games in Providence, including a 1-0 shutout in Game Five that gave them two chances to win the series at home. The Bruins, however, would dig deep and shrug off that seemingly bleak set of circumstances. The visitors captured Game Six rather easily, 5-2, and then managed to pull off a victory in the deciding Game Seven as well, squeaking by the Wolf Pack by a margin of 5-4 despite being outshot in the game by a count of 44-21.

Despite the first-round disappointment, it was a very successful developmental year for the Pack and the Rangers organization. Callahan became the first Wolf Pack forward to earn AHL All-Rookie honors, Dubinsky and Immonen both cracked the 20-goal mark, defensemen like Dave Liffiton, Ivan Baranka and Corey Potter made big strides, and Montoya had another strong campaign, winning 27 games, posting six shutouts and finishing fifth in the AHL in goals-against average (2.30).

The Wolf Pack’s launching of its second decade of play in the AHL came with franchise icon Ken Gernander advancing to another new level of identification with the team.

The parent Rangers named Jim Schoenfeld their assistant general manager, player personnel July 23, 2007, and that opened the door for Gernander to assume the Wolf Pack head-coaching reins, after two seasons as an assistant to Schoenfeld. Daigneault was back for a second year as a Pack assistant, and the organization moved Pat Boller from the Ranger staff to Hartford as a second assistant to Gernander.

The transition sparked the Wolf Pack to another dominating season in 2007-08, as veteran defenseman Andrew Hutchinson (named in January to captain the team), led the Pack to a team-record 110 standings points and a franchise record-tying 50 victories. Only the brilliance of the division-rival Bruins, who steamrolled to 55 wins and 117 points, kept the Wolf Pack from being the top team in the Eastern Conference.

Hutchinson, a full-time NHL’er the previous two campaigns, posted the best season ever by a Wolf Pack defenseman and became the first Pack blueliner to capture the Eddie Shore Award, given to the AHL’s top D-man. Hutchinson led league defenders in points, with 64, and assists, with 46, and set Wolf Pack team records for points and goals (18) by a defenseman. The sixth-year pro also notched the first-ever hat trick, and five-point game, by a Pack blueliner.

Hutchinson’s defense partner for most of the season, and fellow former Michigan State University Spartan, Potter, also had a great year, going +33, the best single-season plus/minus figure in Wolf Pack history. Top-notch offensive threat P.A. Parenteau, too, was a key cog, as he registered the fourth-most points in the AHL with 84.

For the second straight season, however, the Wolf Pack were unable to make their way out of the first round of the postseason, and for the second time in three years, it was Kevin Dineen and the Portland Pirates who frustrated the Pack.
The Wolf Pack captured Game One of the best-of-seven series, 3-1 at home, but then dropped four straight one-goal games, a longer losing streak than they had suffered all regular season.

The Pirates would go on to prove that series win was no fluke, as they ousted the regular-season league-champion Bruins in six games in the second round, but the Wolf Pack were left to ponder a quick and vexing end to what had been one of the most positive seasons in a long run of success.