NHL players sometimes begin their pro careers on AHL only contracts. Oilers fans may remember names like Mark Arcobello, Charles Linglet, or more recently Vincent Desharnais and James Hamblin.
The current Oilers have signed several interesting prospects to full NHL deals, including a passel from Europe.
Earlier in the offseason, Bakersfield Condors signed some interesting Pitlicks and a magic Copponi to AHL deals, effectively overstocking shelves in California and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Yesterday, the club added four more AHL deals.
Luke Prokop is 23. He is 6.05, 223 pounds and I ranked him No. 85 in my final 2020 ‘Here Comes the Sun’ rankings. I wrote “A giant (6.04, 218) able to close gaps and suppress offense” and he has a reputation for being an effective defender at the minor league level. His wingspan isn’t quite Vincent Desharnais level, but you can see him from there. Prokop is RH and big, he should be a strong AHL option for the Condors. He’s young enough to have an NHL career, we’ll see how he shines.
Mats Lindgren is the son of Mats Lindgren. I would like to thank the family for making things easy to figure out. The younger Lindgren is a left defenseman who played most of last season in the ECHL with the Wheeling Nailers. I wrote about him at The Athletic before the 2022 draft, suggesting speed would get him as far as he could go. Lindgren turns 21 in a couple of weeks, this is a player with room to grow. Strong addition to the Condors, and possibly the Oilers prospect pipeline.
Trevor Janicke is a RH center who turns 25 on Christmas day. He came out of college (Notre Dame) last fall and scored well for the Rapid City Rush (ECHL) and not at all for the Calgary Wranglers (AHL) in 2024-25. He’s small, but skilled and plays an aggressive game. Janicke is a bit of an unknown to us, but did have some draft buzz (fifth round) back in 2019.
Matt Brown is 26, and an undersized skill winger. He has been in pro hockey for two seasons, and scored 32 goals in 92 ECHL games. He had a massive year for Boston University as a college senior, and was named to the Hockey-East All-Star team.
The Oilers are (from my point of view) using all available procurement avenues in an attempt to re-stock the minor-league system. It would be easy to underestimate the effort, with players like Desharnais and Arcobello examples of past success.
That’s the wrong way to view things. Edmonton has never been more in need of quality recruits, and these names have an enormous opportunity this fall. The New York Rangers found Mike Ridley at the University of Manitoba 40 years ago. Looking far and wide for talent is always a good idea.
On the Lowdown today, we’ll have the exhausting round table noon to 2pm on Sports 1440. The wisecracking Declan Krueger, the salty Donovan Paulson and the upstart Josh Fenwick will all be there offering up opinions on the Oilers, Elks, Riverhawks, Jays and more. Hope you can tune in.
So if the managers are nosing around top prospect goalies, what does that mean?
I think it means Bowman is a big time beaucoup horse trader. He would almost certainly have to trade a significant prospect to do that. Big time change in approach
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of a week that will live in infamy in Oilers history.
What happened a year ago?
Where two young men chose TOI and money over the chance to be a part of history
Maybe
The Blues have as much a chance of being anything as my kids Blues Clues undies have of rising from the dump as zombie gonch
— Evaluating AHL “success” is an interesting give and take exercise
— All things being equal if your graduating a lot of AHL players to your team it’s because your team likely sucks and is full of AHL tweeners anyways
— If your AHL team is really good it’s likely because you have been really bad NHL team so you have a lot of draft and development
— If your AHL team stinks all things being equal it’s likely because you do t have draft and develops because your trading them like madman during your “window”
— All that to say that I’m fairly comfortable that most teams don’t use tools or have methodologies to evaluate the quality of the coaching in the AHL or players for that matter except the obvious ones.
— Meaning coaches that win in the AHL are consistently getting promoted for things that are mostly out of their control: ie emerging rosters with talent that goes to the show
The AHL is a coaches league. The talent level of teams is roughly equal, apart from single season anomalies. Good coaches win, bad coaches lose, and mid coaches stay mediocre.
The talent level being equal among AHL teams isn’t even remotely true.
There are teams with very few young prospects and led by veterans (Hershey Bears) and other on the other side of the spectrum with many young prospects, of varying tiers, leading.
Wow.
AHL Team success is generally driven by the veterans, not the real prospects. The Hershey Bears were runner’s up and they had one real prospect contributing materially. The team was led by Ethan Bear.
— yeah that’s not what I’m getting at.
— defining “success” in the AHL is a moving target because of the stage each AHL teams roster is is mostly about the status and stage of the NHL team.
— So determining whether a AHL team is successful means different things
I still hold a tiny bit of hope the Oilers sign Munzenburger in the next 3 days……
Had been hoping the same but looking at it now, I don’t see it. They have Leppanen, Regula(barring a waiver claim), Brown, Prokop, Carfanga, Lindgren(Fort Wayne?), Akey, Dineen, Stillman, Millman(Fort Wayne?) and a couple others I’m aware of but forget their names.
Injuries, recalls and possibly a waiver grab aside, that’s getting pretty clogged for playing time. Would Munzenberger take a AHL/ECHL contract or roll the dice back in the DEL and see if that garners attention?
Be cool if they could get him under contract no doubt, just can’t see it myself.
Not to mention the NHL left side is full
The NHL left side currently has one player signed for next season (yes, that will change but, for now).
I believe they offered Munzenburger an AHL deal and he rejected.
I must be missing something as I would have offered him an ELC without thinking about it and would only have him behind Akey and Regula as far as young d-prospects in the org.
I’m clearly wrong on him, I think.
That’s a tell. But he’s not really behind those two righties
A couple of AHL/ECHL tweeners in the group yesterday – maybe a Cam Wright comes out of the bunch.
The one player mentioned by LT that I am interested in is Matt Copponi.
A very good year at Merimack offensively but a step back this past season at BU – he was buried on a very stacked team, of course.
I liked his game in his small sample with the Condors (2 apples in 3 games as well) and I look for him to be the guy that earns an NHL contract.
Quinn Hutson led the BU team in scoring and had nearly double the points of Copponi but, at the same time, he’s 18 months older.
Which one is the “better prospect”?
Hutson
Perhaps – I’m not convinced but probably.
I also have Marjala in that conversation.
Just had a quick look at Puckpedia, it’s going to be a wild camp in Bakersfield. There are a lot of players for the number of spots. Fantastic depth down in the AHL/ECHL.
Makes me wonder if Bowman is expecting movement via trades/waivers at the end of camp.
Nice to see GMSB adding new warm bodies to Bako. Sounds like all 4 new Condors add some speed/compete to the mix. And Prokop is a large human being!
Another post awaiting approval….. the last one got deleted. I do not understand.
What is the issue?
None. Don’t know why it got caught in the filter.
I know this has happened to you a few times recently and I understand your frustration as it also happens to me sporadically.
There are some words that will will get a post caught in the filter – naming the owner of the team, a player’s name from the world junior trial, etc.
At the same time, I get the random innocuous post caught and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why – I had one yesterday on Kostin that got caught – no idea why. Tried to re-post, caught again.
It’s a mystery. This old blog is SO old that updates from wordpress can send it sideways
It’s the blog version of the Millennium Falcon 😀😀
I am certain a better wordsmith can turn the name of that legendary star boat into one with a Lowetidian flavour….
Time to migrate back to blogspot? 😛
A few days back I had comments ‘waiting for moderation’. Not lately
Newspeak.
Akismet will flag legitimate comments that are submitted quickly as spam or hold them moderation. It will also hold comments that are too perfect or those processed by LLMs for moderation. So maybe post slower and be less accurate. Seems to react poorly to quickly copying and pasting.
It would be generous to deem any of my posts crafted anywhere close to perfection, and they are not normally hasty in terms of the time it takes me to compose my conscious stream using a single thumb….but it was a reply to a post of mine own.
So this seems to be the most plausible explanation.
I would also guess that it might not like many comments from the same IP over a period of minutes. My experience has also been that if I get flagged it takes a bit before the egregious flagging stops. Once Akismet has an IP in its sights it will tend to re-flag the next posts.
The signing of Luke Prokop is impressive to me. This kid should be on an NHL contract somewhere, because of size, Right Shot, draft pedigree and skating. But he is not.
He started to show flashes of very good in Milwaukee towards the latter part of the season, but he was buried down the depth chart by veteran blue and winning, rather than development.
This signing, along with Copponi and the Pitlicks are simply excellent moves. I am really impressed with how things are shaking out in Condorstown.
Agree on being impressed by these recent additions. I’m particularly interested in Lindgren due to his age and wheels.
I was pretty high on him in his draft year and will be curious to see how he fares in a pool suddenly filled with average-ish sized LH dmen who are fleet of foot.
Not sure about his chances, but he was definitely a player on my radar that Draft. He will have the Bako leftorium to hurdle, but he is an intriguing player.
Big D like Prokup may take years on the development train before they pop. I’m really excited on Bakersfield it’s going to take a few years but at least they look like they have a actual plan and are laying the foundation.
Exactly!
Amen
I was pondering what Bowman sees as the plan for the Condors, if he thinks they need to be a competitive franchise or doesn’t value that. It does seem they are putting a lot more effort into procurement, and that they are looking for players that fit their vision. Of course most won’t make it, but being organized and focused increases the odds of finding a player that fits the mould and can contribute
Bowman likes elevating players through the system where as his predecessor had no time or interest in development. We have a big fat zero Holland drafted players on our team.
Correct. They’re both in St Louis
And hopefully elevate others by surrounding them with talent.
Matvey Petrov; he has size, decent skating and so many tools that he could still turn into a player. I thought he could follow in Lavoie’s footsteps, as he is a better skater and is much more defensively responsible.
I know injuries were a factor for him, but I also think Cam Wright and Jacob Perrault took away many of his opportunities. I get it, but I will maintain that to always absolutely be the wrong approach.
I will leave it here, but I am going to be looking for better things out of the Condor’s coaching staff.