Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Perhaps the 2024-25 AHL season ends with the Milwaukee Admirals lifting the Calder Cup.
Or maybe a successful regular season quickly falls apart once the Calder Cup Playoffs begin, and the Admirals go home quietly. Or the Admirals miss the postseason altogether.
Nothing is guaranteed, a point Admirals head coach Karl Taylor is stressing to his club. Milwaukee has gone to the Western Conference Finals in each of the last two seasons, but that means little now.
In 2018, Taylor worked as an assistant coach with the Texas Stars when they took the powerhouse Toronto Marlies to Game 7 of the Calder Cup Finals. A year later, the Stars missed the playoffs.
More recently, Taylor’s Admirals won 19 consecutive games last season, the second-longest such streak in AHL history. Then they lost nine of their next 11 games. Fortunes change quickly in this league. Nothing is guaranteed. Even for the Admirals, a franchise that has won seven division titles and reached the Calder Cup Playoffs 18 times in 21 tries since coming to the AHL.
“You learn when you’re a younger coach – you think you’ve established things and you can move forward every season – there’s a need to re-establish the habit, all the good things you had in previous years,” Taylor said. “If you don’t start at step one, it doesn’t go over well.
“This is a new group. Even how the returning players react to the new players, that’s all a new process for everyone.”
However, the Admirals have managed to win while they begin to set what they hope can be a successful identity. Since being shut out by Grand Rapids on opening night, Milwaukee has rattled off eight consecutive victories, including a two-game sweep in Manitoba this weekend.
The Admirals roster’s new look in 2024-25 began with an all-new tandem in net after Yaroslav Askarov was dealt to San Jose and Troy Grosenick signed with Minnesota. Magnus Chrona was part of the return from the Sharks, and Matt Murray, a familiar opponent from their Central Division rivalry with Texas, came over after two seasons in the Dallas organization. Both Chrona (2022, Denver) and Murray (2021, UMass) won national championships in college.
Agitating forward Zach L’Heureux, who had an exceptional postseason last spring with 10 goals in 15 games for the Admirals, started the season in Milwaukee but quickly merited a promotion to Nashville. The 21-year-old, a 2021 first-round pick, has two assists in six games with the Predators, and the Admirals cannot necessarily count on his return to Milwaukee at this point. Phil Tomasino, Marc Del Gaizo, Juuso Parssinen, Spencer Stastney and Mark Jankowski are also in Nashville.
But first-round draft picks Joakim Kemell, Fedor Svechkov, Reid Schaefer and Ozzy Wiesblatt are back after experiencing a long playoff run in 2024, and the Predators made sure to replenish Taylor’s roster with proven players like Kieffer Bellows, Nick Blankenburg, Jake Lucchini and Vinnie Hinostroza, whose 16 points in nine games lead the entire AHL.
The pressure is on in Nashville to win – as evidenced by the offseason additions of Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei – and anything that impacts the NHL parent team has an effect on the AHL affiliate. With an affiliation dating back to Nashville’s 1998-99 expansion season, the Admirals understand that reality.
“For us, the returning players know how we operate, what we expect here, and how we go about our business on and off the ice,” Taylor said. “Or what Nashville expects out of our Milwaukee Admirals. The returning players know what the staff expects day in and day out. I think that helps set the culture.
“Each and every year we play, we’re hoping to have a chance to win the Calder Cup.”
Taylor has been around. He knows that the Calder Cup Playoffs are a long way away. That affords time to implement how he wants his team to play, but it is also indicative of the road that any team faces in the regular season – to say nothing of a fight for a Calder Cup that can last another two months. To play into June, as the Admirals have done the past two years, will take another sustained effort, and that work starts long before spring’s arrival.
Said Taylor, “There are no guarantees, right?”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.