Earlier today, AHL president Dave Andrews released a statement on the Manitoba Moose, and left the future of the team as an open issue with this remark: “The future of the Manitoba AHL franchise will be determined in the weeks ahead, and we look forward to Winnipeg’s NHL club developing its top prospects in the AHL.”
But later in the day, Patrick Williams of The Hockey News has tweeted this:
Wherever the Moose go, they will be the NHL Winnipeg club’s new AHL affiliate. Canucks are on their own for a new affiliation.
Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t know this, but that caught me by surprise.
I realize the Vancouver Canucks were likely to lose their affiliation with the Moose—especially if they end up moving to the east coast, as has been widely suggested—but I didn’t expect that an affiliation with the new Winnipeg Jets/Mosquitos/Moose/Wheaties team was considered a pro forma certainty.
And in all of this, what’s to become of the Chicago Wolves, the Atlanta Thrashers AHL affiliate? (Just wondering. And I imagine a whole lot of Wolves fans would like to know, too.)
All of this, incidentally, reminds me of a story that came out a couple years ago, where talk was that the Vancouver Canucks were thinking of moving their AHL interests away from Manitoba over to Abbotsford. Specifically, to the Abbotsford Heat, currently the Calgary Flames AHL affiliate.
Apparently that possibility is being floated again, though the Calgary Flames President and CEO Ken King denied last week that it’s something that’s likely to happen.
Still, it seems there’s a lot of re-shuffling going on at the AHL level this year that’s going to have a significant impact on their players, as well as the NHL as a whole.
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