Dom Amore: Wolf Pack playoff surge; meaningful Paige Bueckers splurge; a choice Adama Sanago deserves and more in the Sunday read

HARTFORD — It’s minor league hockey. The emphasis is on player development, the results merely a byproduct.

Sure, and nobody around here remembers how to hum Brass Bonanza.

To the Wolf Pack, who won eight in a row going into their regular-season finale at Springfield Saturday night to nail down an AHL playoff spot, the franchise’s first since 2015, it has meant plenty.

“Going into this season we had high expectations, we expected to make the playoffs,” said Tanner Fritz, a veteran of AHL battles who has served as a leader to the younger Pack members. “The first half of the season didn’t go as we anticipated, but the last couple of months we played some good hockey.”

Dom Amore: Zac Jones returns to Wolf Pack with a pro’s attitude, and performs like an All-Star

It matters to the Wolf Pack’s core of loyal fans, too, its booster club, some of whom have been traveling to nearby games in Springfield, Providence or Bridgeport to support the playoff push. This was the franchise’s best-attended season at the XL Center since 2006, with 4,647 per game, including 16 crowds of more than 5,000. There were 6,226 for the last home game Friday night.

“It’s been amazing,” said Ty Emberson, 21, in his first season in Hartford. “I can see why the Whalers were so successful here for a long time. The fans have been awesome. The players definitely heard it on the ice. When we have a big game coming up, they’re always loud in the stands.”

Going into the last weekend of the regular season, the Wolf Pack (35-25 with four OT losses, seven shoot-out losses), the long-time Rangers’ affiliate, has been jockeying for position in the Atlantic Division bracket. If things break right, the Pack could get a home game Wednesday or Friday in the first series, a best-of-three mostly likely against Springfield.

“We started coming together, started really wanting to hit the playoffs,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “Everybody was dialed in, playing hard.”

Additions following the trade deadline helped, but took some time to be assimilated. The mix of young prospects and veterans has proven the right combination.

The parent Rangers have a playoff mission of their own, however, and called four players up from Hartford this weekend, veteran goalie Louis Domingue, top scorer Jonny Brodzinski, forward Jake Leschyshyn, defenseman Libor Hajek.

Fritz, 31, is in his eighth AHL season, his first six with Bridgeport, where he last made the playoffs in 2016. He leads the Pack in assists with 33, to go with 10 goals in 66 games and has helped set a professional example.

“Those older guys had a huge part of it,” Knoblauch said. “This year we were out of the playoffs at a certain point and it doesn’t look very good, and it would have been real easy for those guys to say, ‘Ahh, it’s not going to happen again, why are we going to work so hard?’ But there was never any quit, a lot of positivity and we started pulling it together.”

Brodzinski, with 48 points, and Will Cuylle, who was up in New York earlier, with 45 points are the top scorers in Hartford, followed by Ryan Carpenter (44) and Fritz (43). Domingue (2.57 goals against) and prospect Dylan Garand (3.07) split the goaltending; presumably the playoffs will be Garand’s.

Dom Amore: Veteran goalie Louis Domingue brings experience, and a little spice to Wolf Pack

With the playoff race so tight, the games since late March have felt like playoff games. The Wolf Pack clinched its spot with a 5-3 win at Providence on April 7, and kept on winning.

“We’re all just on the same page; we want to win,” Fritz said. “We all do the little things that give the team success. Unselfishness, playing for each other, sticking together through the whole season. It’s a credit to the guys in the room.”

What better way to send players on to the NHL than with winning habits?

More in your Sunday Read:

Paige Bueckers helping out at home

UConn’s Paige Bueckers does a lot of cool things with her unique UConn women’s basketball platform,and her NIL money.

On Thursday she used some of that money and her influence to open a pop-up, free grocery market at her old middle school, Hopkins West, in Minnetonka, Minn. Food insecurity is a cause celebre for her.

Chegg, in partnership with hunger relief company Goodr, helped make it happen. Bueckers hopes the market will help 50 families each week.

Champs remember their lost teammate

After winning the national championship with its pair of inspired performances in the Frozen Four, the Quinnipiac players made sure to remember Michael Torello, who joined the team in 2017 through the Team Impact Program.

Michael, who had cerebral palsy, died in July 2021 at age 15.

“Michael, you’re a national champion,” Bobcats captain Zach Metsa tweeted, as the team posed at the airport with a No.1 jersey with Michael Torello’s name. “You have meant so much to this program. We know you were watching like you always have. We’re thinking of you.”

Metsa, who signed with the Buffalo Sabres this week and will join Rochester in time for the AHL playoffs, was the first to win Quinnipiac’s Michael Torello Award, given for perseverance and resiliency and the ability to overcome adversity.

Sunday short takes

* The UConn Club will honor Jim Penders Sr., father of the UConn baseball coach and longtime coach at East Catholic, with its Red O’Neill Award in a dinner at Dunkin’ Park following the Huskies’ game against Yale there on April 25. The elder Penders, a 1967 grad, scored the winning run against Holy Cross to send UConn to the College World Series in ’65. The O’Neill Award recognizes “the highest attributes of character, leadership, athletic ability, and later, a successful professional career.” Couldn’t imagine a better representative of those attributes.

* Just so we’re clear, I like contemporary lingo as much as the next guy, but refuse to use the word “natty” to describe anything other than someone’s fashion choices, such as the Huskies’ nattily attired coaches. … ‘Ship? I don’t think so.

* The Travelers Championship is really going to be lit this year, huh?

* University of New Haven quarterback Connor Degenhardt, who transferred from Holy Cross and threw for 3,907 yards, 43 TDs and nine interceptions in two seasons, winning 18 of 23 for the playoff-bound Charger teams, is getting some pre-draft attention. Degenhart threw for pro scouts at Harvard and UConn Pro Days, and fielded a lot of questions from the scouts of 10 teams in Storrs. Could be a late pick, or a free agent signed immediately after the draft.

* Don’t know why Quinnipiac couldn’t have squeezed in a parade in Hamden, that true, old-school hockey town. About 2 1/2 miles from the foot of York Hill to Town Hall would have been kind of nice.

* The last time the NCAA Division I men’s hockey and basketball championships were claimed by the same state was 1977, ESPN Stats and Info noted, when Wisconsin won in hockey and Marquette in basketball. The coaches were legends: Bob Johnson, later a Stanley Cup champ, and Al McGuire.

* The Tampa Bay Rays, ladies and gents. It’s not how much you spend in baseball, and never has been. It’s who is spending it.

Last word

Adama Sanogo made the right call this week. If he’s not appearing on NBA Draft boards now, another year of college ball, whether he returned to UConn or did the unthinkable and transferred somewhere else, would not have improved his stock. Any improvement in his game would have been offset by his being a year older going into the 2024 Draft. So this is the time for him to go make his way as a professional, wherever that takes him. Sanogo leaves behind a legacy at UConn of which he can be proud.