The 2026 Calder Cup Playoffs kicked off this week, with 23 American Hockey League teams aiming to be the last team standing.
One of those teams is situated right here in North Carolina in the Charlotte Checkers.
It’s Charlotte’s eighth consecutive postseason appearance and the sixth under coach Geordie Kinnear.
Last year, they made it all the way to the Calder Cup Final, ultimately losing in six games to the Abbotsford Canucks, but this year they’re hoping to take the crown.
The Checkers, who are affiliated with the Florida Panthers, finished with the third best record in the Atlantic Division and will face off against the Springfield Thunderbirds in the first round.
The way the Calder Cup Playoffs are set up, the first round series will be played solely on the Checkers’ home ice at Bojangles Coliseum and will be a best-of-three series.
If Charlotte wins, they will advance to face the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
It certainly wasn’t an easy year for the Checkers, who lost four of their top scorers from the previous year in the offseason.
The team also had to weather a seemingly never ending cycle of callups as their parent club, the Panthers, dealt with a plethora of injuries throughout the year.
Despite that, Charlotte came together in the end and found their way into the playoffs.
“I’m so proud of the group because it was a big leadership group change, but those guys really bought in and took it over probably three quarters of the way through the season,” Kinnear told Checkers Director of Communications Nicholas Niedzielski after the final regular season game. “I’m super proud of them.”
For the most part, it was a lot of the players from last year’s group taking big steps in their development.
Ben Steeves led the Checkers both in goals (23) and points (45) this season and the team’s top-four scorers were all returning players from last season (Jack Devine, Sandis Vilmanis, Wilmer Skoog).
The AHL is the NHL’s primary development league and the second highest level hockey league in North America, featuring many of the game’s up and coming prospects, but it’s also a league with a lot of internal turnover, especially by older players.
So you really need those young players to continue developing if you want to see continued success.
And not only have the Checkers gelled as a group, they also now have a myriad of players with NHL experience.
In total, 11 players on the Checkers’ roster played in the NHL this season and those players combined for 145 games of total experience.
Getting the chance to play in the best league in the world will almost certainly be helpful for those players and the team as the stakes ramp up here in the postseason.
“Having some extra bodies, there’s some internal competition and no one wants to lose their job,” said Jack Studnicka, one of the players with NHL experience. “It’s been fun to be a group of almost 30 guys competing.”
Charlotte has one Calder Cup title in their history, winning it all the way back in 2018-19 when they were affiliated with the Carolina Hurricanes.
Another AHL team with connections to NC in this year’s Calder Cup Playoffs is the Chicago Wolves, who are the Hurricanes’ current AHL affiliate.
The Wolves, who are quite a young team, took a big step this season after a fairly hit and miss year last season.
The team improved both in goal, with netminders Cayden Primeau and Amir Miftakhov, and that extra year of professional experience was good for a lot of the team’s first-year professionals.
They were led in scoring by top Hurricanes prospects Bradly Nadeau and Felix Unger Sorum and also saw a lot of growth on the backend from players like Ronan Seeley, Charles Alexis Legault and Joel Nystrom.
“It’s been fun to be a part of that group,” Seeley said after earning an NHL callup in Carolina’s final regular season game. “It’s been fun to take on a bigger role too. We have a really good group, a young group, and we’re meshing well. We’ve had our ups and downs this year, which is good for us. We’re growing and we’re going through growing pains and just like the Canes, we’re looking forward to the second part of the season. It’s gonna be a blast.”
The Wolves will take on the Texas Stars in the Central Division Semifinals, which will be a best-of-five series.
Chicago has won the Calder Cup three times in their history and once since being affiliated with the Hurricanes (2021-22).
