Chirps from Center Ice

We don’t exactly know when the start of the AHL season will be, targeted for December 2020, but we do know that the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins will be in the market for a new head coach (announced September 2) and a new captain (announced last week).

Let’s start with the older news. David Warsofsky was traded with other assets last week to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Kasperi Kapanen. The return, affecting Wilkes-Barre were forward Pontus Aberg and defenseman Jesper Lindgren. Both spent time in Toronto with the Marlies last year but will start their seasons overseas because of the pandemic here in the United States and the uncertainty of if, or even when, an AHL season may occur in the midst of all of this.

Kasper Bjorkvist will also play overseas next season. It’s going to happen a lot with the foreign born players. Development waits for no one.

Today’s news shouldn’t come as a shock, Mike Vellucci was named as an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Vellucci was always destined for Pittsburgh. You don’t steal a guy off of a team that just won the Calder Cup without some guarantee baked in that one day he will be behind the bench of your NHL team. It wasn’t a matter of if Vellucci would head to Pittsburgh, it was a matter of when. When the Penguins cleaned house and fired all of their assistant coaches and kept Mike Sullivan on, the writing was on the wall.

I have no idea who Wilkes-Barre has in mind for captain.

Candidates for head coach could include current assistants J.D. Forrest or Jarrod Skalde or the Penguins could go deeper in the organization and hire Mark French, who was recently named as the Wheeling Nailers head coach. If the name rings a bell, French coached the Hershey Bears when they won 60 games in 2009-10. I mean if you had to ask me now who the front runner is or would be, it would be French. He’s familiar with coaching in this neck of the AHL woods and is already under contract in the organization. It’s a no-brainer.

We don’t even have a schedule yet and have no idea if we will even have AHL hockey this season, so a new head coach may be a low priority thing at this point in time. The next blog post (whenever the hell that may be these days) may be introducing the new head coach after the announcement comes down from Coal Street on who that man or woman may be.

Stay tuned.

Wear your mask, wash your hands, stay six feet away from people and for god sakes, stay home if you are sick.