Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Summer season’s months for younger prospects imply a time to relaxation, get well and construct for coaching camp in September.
For goaltender Tomas Suchanek, that was final summer time’s plan. Till it wasn’t.
A ruptured ACL led to knee surgical procedure in September, and Suchanek missed your entire 2024-25 season following a robust rookie marketing campaign. Undrafted and enjoying on an AHL contract, Suchanek started 2023-24 within the ECHL earlier than going 14-10-5 with a 2.92 goals-against common and a .910 save proportion with the San Diego Gulls. Anaheim signed him to a three-year entry-level contract in March 2024.
The 22-year-old Suchanek started the lengthy, tedious means of rehabilitating. With such a long-term damage to one in every of its organizational goaltenders, the Geese wanted to maneuver on shortly by necessity. Anaheim scrambled to signal veteran Oscar Dansk to take Suchanek’s place in San Diego alongside Calle Clang.
Suchanek lastly acquired again to work earlier this month at Anaheim’s three-day improvement camp held on the crew’s observe facility in Irvine, Calif. He joined a pair of prospects who had temporary stints with San Diego this previous season, Vyacheslav Buteyets and Damian Clara.
“It’s superior,” Suchanek mentioned. “It’s actually thrilling. I used to be anxious to get again on the ice.”
Anaheim has already had success creating a franchise goaltender in San Diego. Lukas Dostal, who signed a five-year contract with the Geese on Thursday, performed 98 video games with the Gulls throughout three seasons, and is poised to imagine the number-one function in Anaheim after final month’s commerce of John Gibson to Detroit. The depth chart additionally contains veterans Petr Mrazek and Ville Husso, along with the 23-year-olds Clang and Buteyets and 20-year-old Clara.
Someplace in all of that blend is Suchanek, who was a Second Crew All-Star within the Western Hockey League enjoying for Tri-Metropolis in 2022-23. He additionally took Czechia to a silver-medal end on the IIHF World Junior Championship that 12 months.
With so many prospects within the pipeline, Gulls goaltending coach Jeff Glass has a full contingent of expertise to handle. Competitors breeds progress, and there will likely be battles for taking part in time with the Gulls and their ECHL affiliate in Tulsa. With San Diego’s goaltending plans upended so late final summer time, the Gulls struggled defensively and ended up permitting 3.49 targets per sport, tied for second-most within the AHL.
Glass is acquainted with what Suchanek goes by. A second-round draft choose by Ottawa, Glass spent 4 seasons between the AHL and ECHL earlier than going to Europe for seven years. He didn’t attain the NHL till he was 32, in his thirteenth professional season. He is aware of the necessity for persistence with younger goaltenders, dwelling it himself and now reinforcing it as a coach.
Glass is happy with what he has seen from Suchanek, who used his rehabilitation time productively.
“Though he’s been off and away from the sport on the ice, we’ve seen fairly a little bit of him off ice, and he’s put a whole lot of work in,” Glass mentioned. “He’s come again with a recent thoughts… He is perhaps forward of the place he was. It’s actually thrilling for a man like that who’s recent, and he’s able to go. The grind of the hockey season catches as much as a man, and you must be away for a short time to actually reignite that fireside.”
On the American Hockey League beat for 20 years, TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams additionally at the moment covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is an everyday contributor on SiriusXM NHL Community Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
