WILLIAMS: Amidst parent club turmoil, Lehigh Valley Phantoms staying focused

Even by AHL standards, where the cold reality is that your NHL parent team’s problems quickly become your own challenges and issues, it has been a staggering onslaught that the Lehigh Valley Phantoms have faced this season.

The trick, as always, for AHL head coaches and their veteran cores is to not let those challenges and issues grow and create another set of problems. That hazy space is where the Phantoms have spent the past month amid multiple waves of upheaval 75 minutes to their south with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Philadelphia fired a general manager (Ron Hextall), an assistant coach (Gord Murphy), an assistant general manager (Chris Pryor), dispatched a goaltender (Calvin Pickard) to the NHL waiver wire (where he was subsequently claimed by the Arizona Coyotes), hired a new general manager (Chuck Fletcher), endured an ugly Canadian road trip, fired a head coach (Dave Hakstol) after said journey, brought in their AHL affiliate’s head coach (Scott Gordon) to become their interim head coach, recalled their would-be future franchise number-one goaltender (Carter Hart) even after he had struggled in the AHL, and lost eight of their 13 games.

And that all came in a four-week span. Leading up to the first organization-wide jolt, Hextall’s firing, the pressure in Philadelphia had continued to build, though it mainly focused on Hakstol. A will-he-or-won’t-he saga involving the idea of Joel Quenneville stepping behind the Philadelphia bench raged for more than three weeks after Hextall’s dismissal.

Those aftershocks reached the Lehigh Valley. The Phantoms lost a head coach in Gordon, saw that top goaltending prospect in Hart depart, and had to bring their own assistant coach (Kerry Huffman) into an interim head-coaching role, his first such role in the pro game. Amid those chaotic-at-the-best-of-times realities that come with AHL life, the Phantoms had to brace themselves to avoid Philadelphia’s turmoil from blasting apart their season as well.

And yet all the Phantoms have done since the end of November is shut out those distractions, stick to their mandate of developing talent to send to Philadelphia, and win games. Going into their visit from the Providence Bruins on Friday night, the Phantoms have taken eight of their 12 games (and nearly took another victory in a shootout defeat to the powerful Syracuse Crunch last week).

“WE’RE NOT THE ISSUE DOWN HERE”

Left to steer the Phantoms have been Gordon – before he went to Philadelphia – and Huffman, along with captain Colin McDonald and a quality veteran core. McDonald made no attempt to downplay the flood of challenges that his team has endured.

At 34 years old and in his fourth season holding the Lehigh Valley captaincy, McDonald possesses ample experience to guide an AHL dressing room. Along with the Phantoms, he has also captained Bridgeport and served as a co-captain during his NCAA career at Providence College. McDonald will also represent the Phantoms at the AHL All-Star Classic in January as a playing captain. But even with 657 AHL regular-season games (plus another 148 regular-season NHL contests) to his name, such a situation would challenge any veteran leader.

“It has been tough,” McDonald said last Saturday after the Phantoms blew out the Hershey Bears, 6-1, on the road. “Not to try to sugar-coat it, [I am] just really proud of how the guys ignored the external noise. There was just so much uncertainty the last month or so. We finally got some answers [last] week with all the changes. We had some meetings to just get the guys focused on playing hockey.”

“I said, ‘We’re not the issue down here. Just keep doing what we’re doing.’”

All of that is easier said than done, of course, so McDonald had his work cut out for him.

Said Huffman, “The kids all know what’s going on. Everybody can read Twitter and read what’s going on. Change is never easy for anybody. Some of these kids, it’s the first time going through a coaching change or a management change.”

NEXT STEP

After a three-day holiday break, the Phantoms continued to take care of their on-ice business, nailing down a 5-3 come-from-behind road win against the rival Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins this past Wednesday night. Goaltender Alex Lyon, dispatched from Philadelphia to the AHL after Hart’s recall, has handled the situation well, making four consecutive strong starts.

Add it all up, and the Phantoms have barged into third place in the Atlantic Division, owners of an 18-9-1-2 record that puts them four points behind the second-place Bridgeport Sound Tigers with three games in hand. With Providence in town and a rematch against the Penguins, this time at home on Saturday night, a strong weekend could even put the Phantoms closer to the first-place Charlotte Checkers, who start a six-game road trip at the Laval Rocket on Friday night.

Twelve hours later, they filled in an important off the ice as well. The Phantoms announced Thursday morning that Huffman will continue as their interim head coach through the end of the season after going 3-0-1-0 since taking over for Gordon on December 17. The 50-year-old Huffman, who played 401 NHL regular-season games that included parts of seven seasons with the Flyers, built his reputation in Lehigh Valley in part with his work with the team’s defensemen since joining the club for the 2016-17 season. He prepared blueliners Travis Sanheim and Robert Hägg for subsequent duty in Philadelphia while Philippe Myers and Mark Friedman have also shown growth under Huffman’s guidance.

Philadelphia also installed long-time coach Terry Murray as an assistant to Huffman.

PROCESS FIRST

Already popular with the Lehigh Valley roster, Huffman nevertheless inherited quite the situation in his first week as a pro head coach.

So, he has offered a to-the-point message. Take the Phantoms closing out Hershey last weekend. Holding a 4-1 second-intermission lead, the Phantoms were playing out the third period of their final game before a much-needed holiday after these weeks of tumult.

That could have been a prime opportunity for bad habits to begin to creep into their collective game. Yet the Phantoms clamped down on the Bears down the stretch, blew the game open with two more goals, and made sure that they went into their break with positive energy.

“That has been the message – regardless of the outcome, focus on what we’re doing,” Huffman said. “Focus on how we’re playing, not so much with what the results are. I think those things will take care of themselves. It was a tough, distracting week, and it felt like it was important to just set their focus on small short-term goals.”

“There are a lot of people watching with the change, and they’re watching how our players are reacting to it. I said to them, ‘Guys, you want to be proud of how you play this week. Let’s go out there and prove something, and they did.’”

Said McDonald, “[Game management] is something we’ve struggled with in the past. Kerry said after the second [period], ‘Manage the game.’”

“He’s going to yell at you once. After that, he is not going to play you. It’s easy to look past the third period and start thinking about the break.”

That is where the internal respect that Huffman had acquired came into play even before Thursday’s announcement that cleared up the uncertainty that has followed the team for so long.

“The good news is that because he is so familiar with all of us, it has been an easy transition,” McDonald said. “We said, too, this is not a substitute-teacher type of situation. We’re not trying to take advantage of him.”

THE NEXT STEP

For as much as the Phantoms have seen this season, there is hardly any guarantee that more upheaval is not still on the way.

Philadelphia sits eight points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. A new general manager occupies Hextall’s former position. The NHL trade deadline is two months away, something that can always disrupt an AHL roster. That all comes on top of the standard injuries and second-half schedule-grind that any AHL team faces. Lehigh Valley is starting at a stretch of 13 games in 22 days once January arrives. Uncertainty still surrounds the Flyers and, by extension, the Phantoms.

“It’s going to be a tough push, for sure,” Huffman acknowledged.

Huffman’s task will be to swat away those excuses, develop talent, and take the Phantoms into the Calder Cup Playoffs.

“Everybody has the mindset of how [these recent changes are] going to affect them individually,” he said. “Our focus….was let’s pull together as a team, and let’s deal with this as a team together instead of worrying about individual things. ‘The change, one guy drafted me but now there’s a new guy, what does he think of me?’”

“I said that the only thing that we can control is what he thinks of you moving forward, how we play from this point on. They really bought into that.”

Cleaning up the team’s 5-on-5 play has been on Huffman’s task list and will continue to be. They can put the puck in the net, ranking third in the AHL at 3.80 goals per game. Their special-teams play has excelled – they hold the AHL’s top penalty kill, and their power play sits 10th, though it certainly is lethal enough to place higher before the season ends. Lyon gives them a high-quality number-one option in net.

“TEAMS WANT WINNERS”

Winning hockey means opportunity for AHL players, and McDonald also understands the inclination for his young teammates to feel the professional uncertainty that so much change had brought to the team.

“That’s natural for them to have personal motivations,” the captain said.

“What I always say is that the more you win games, the more those personal goals will be attainable. The way the league is, everybody wants winners, right? If we just keep winning games, if you want to go to a different team, you’ll have that option. If you want to get called up, you’ll have that option. If you want to get a contract extension, you’ll have that option. Teams want winners.”

“We’ve learned a lot. We just have to keep this going.”