ANDREWS BIDS BITTERSWEET FAREWELL TO TIME WITH AHL
After steering the American Hockey League ship for two and a half decades, Dave Andrews wanted to go out as league president handing the Calder Cup to the winning team this spring. He will not be doing that.
“Not exactly how I envisioned retirement ... but I haven’t focused on what a crappy way this is to go out,” joked Andrews, who once upon a time used to run the Edmonton Oilers farm team in Cape Breton before being hired by the AHL in 1994.
“It’s been so busy, managing our way through this (COVID-19) since mid-march has been a very heavy lift but it’s good and we’ve pivoted to focusing on 20-21,” said Andrews, who announced the cancellation of the 2019-20 AHL season on Monday.
They don’t boo Andrews in the rinks like they do NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
“Not unless the deciding game is where the visiting team won and our officials were crappy … in the right circumstance, anybody is going to get booed,” Andrews said with a chuckle.
Andrews is handing over the AHL reins to former Oilers head of player development Scott Howson on July 1.
The AHL started just before The Second World War, and it had never been cancelled.
“Looking back at the history, you would have thought there might have been a disruption in (the Second World War) but there hasn’t been and we’ve had the luxury of no labour unrest to stop us from playing (like the NHL for a full season in 2004-05),” Andrews said.
The AHL has looked at opening the next season under various scenarios, knowing they can’t do it without fans in the seats.
“Our revenues come from ticket sales and corporate sponsorships and we don’t have the luxury of broadcast revenue to any significant amount,” Andrews said.
“We’ve got 31 different jurisdictions in our league and they’re not all coming back at the same time in terms of mass gatherings (fans in rinks). We’re developing our schedule for next season (which usually starts in October) but also building models if we start in November, in December, in January,” he said.
“We’ll have to be very flexible to some of our teams starting before the whole league comes on stream. The NHL teams could want their prospects developing and competing (even if the NHL’S not quite ready),” he said.
The AHL had Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-hopkins, Jordan Eberle and Justin Schultz playing in Oklahoma City with the NHL lockout for half a season in 2012-13.
In 2004-05, they had NHL prospects for a full season.
“The Eric Staals, the Jason Spezzas, Niklas Kronwall, they had all played one or parts of two NHL seasons, then came to us. A lot have said that if it wasn’t for ’04-05, their NHL careers might not have turned out as they did because they didn’t play a lot of minutes in their first few NHL seasons. The lockout forced them into key roles in the American League, power play, killing penalties, playing on a first-line,” Andrews said.
WORKING OUT THE KINKS
Winger Tyler Benson, 22, and farm team goalie Stuart Skinner, 21, will likely be part of the Oilers contingent when the NHL gets back as Black Aces or, in Benson’s case, one of the 12 forwards. He played five games before the March 12 pause.
He’s been using inline skates and an exercise bike and completing a training regimen given to him by the Oilers training staff.
Skinner is at his fiancee’s mother’s place in Red Deer. He had to hustle to get weights.
“Had to go to a few different stores. I got the last set of some dumbbells and my fiancee’s dad had a bench press so I grabbed that off him,” he said.