After a full year with no AHL affiliate, the Carolina Hurricanes and AHL’s Chicago Wolves announced the signing of a new three-year NHL/AHL affiliation agreement. The deal will begin next season and run through the 2026-27 season.
It’s official 🤝
The #Canes have signed a three-year affiliation agreement with the @Chicago_Wolves of @TheAHL through 2026-27. https://t.co/T0f6zAmSQv
— Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) May 2, 2024
Hurricanes and Wolves Enter a Three-Year Affiliation Agreement
TYPICALLY, NHL teams have an affiliation with an AHL team. This is the top-level minor league that NHL teams use for a farm system. However, due to the nature of these types of arrangements, an NHL team is not required and does not always have an affiliation with an AHL team. The Hurricanes found themselves in that scenario for the 2023-24 season. After a previous three-year relationship with the Chicago Wolves, the Wolves decided to go completely independent without an NHL affiliation. With 32 AHL teams and 32 NHL teams, the Hurricanes found themselves the odd man out in that game of musical chairs.
While the reasoning seemed to stem from certain hockey-related disagreements between Carolina and Chicago, they also appeared to surround the fact that many times NHL teams favour prospect development at the AHL level while AHL teams favour winning. This can lead to some friction. Chicago decided they would be better off alone. But it seems like that wasn’t the case. The Wolves finished second to last in the whole AHL. And this came after winning the Calder Cup in 2022, while affiliated with Carolina.
Looking Forward to 2024-25
This is clearly an agreement where the management and ownership groups are fairly familiar with each other. Even during the 2023-24 season, Carolina entered into a sort of ad hoc working arrangement to get some of their prospects to Chicago. This included Ronan Seeley and Domenick Fensore. Max Comtois actually signed an AHL deal with Chicago before inking an NHL contract with Carolina too.
But one big piece of this new agreement is that the Hurricanes will oversee all of the Wolves hockey operations decisions. That could be big as it could help alleviate some of the possible past friction between the two teams. One other bit of news is that the Hurricanes signed Russian goalie Ruslan Khazheyev to a three-year deal recently. This combined with their string of college signings recently seemed to indicate that an AHL deal was possible. Either way, this is good news for Carolina as once again their prospects will have a place to develop at a high level in North America.
Main Photo Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
