The Milwaukee Admirals and Nashville Predators announced they have signed an affiliation extension agreement that runs through the 2028-29 season.
The two teams have been affiliated since the Predators joined the NHL in 1998-99, the third-longest affiliation between an AHL and NHL team.
215 players have appeared in games for both team including Roman Josi, Juuse Saros, and Filip Forsberg. Nine members of the admirals coaching staff have gone on to NHL jobs.
Milwaukee have been one of the most successful and consistent teams in the AHL since their inauguration, making the playoffs in 23 of the 26 seasons in franchise history.
It all starts in Milwaukee 🤝
— Nashville Predators (@PredsNHL) March 24, 2025
We're proud to announce a multi-year affiliation extension with the @mkeadmirals through the 2028-29 season.
Full details » https://t.co/ICpTBlHKUopic.twitter.com/k4S5toCOKV
They defeated the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins to capture their one and only Calder Cup in 2004. They also lost in the finals to the Hershey Bears in 2006.
The Admirals have advanced to the AHL Conference Finals the past two seasons, losing both times to the Coachella Valley Firebirds. They clinched a spot in the 2025 Calder Cup Playoffs earlier this week.
Milwaukee consistently rank in the top-half of the AHL in attendance and it is great to see pro hockey stick in the city.
Make sure you bookmark The Hockey News' AHL Page for the latest news, exclusive interviews, breakdowns and so much more.
Matthew Tkachuk has not been on the ice for the Florida Panthers since early February, Aaron Ekblad is not eligible to play again until Game 3 of the first round of the postseason , and Brad Marchand still hasn’t debuted with his new team since joining at the trade deadline.
Those are big holes down the stretch, and yet they keep on rolling. The Panthers won nine of their first 14 games since the NHL season resumed after the 4 Nations Face-Off break and remain atop the Atlantic Division with 11 left to play.
Seth Jones has fit in perfectly since they acquired him from Chicago, and the defending Stanley Cup champions look primed for another playoff run.
“That’s the way it goes,” said Sam Bennett, whose 12 points over this span are tied with captain Aleksander Barkov for second-most on the roster behind Sam Reinhart (13). “You’re going to be down important guys at important times of the year. In the playoffs, especially, there’s going to be times that you lose guys and it’s up to us to step up and every guy’s got to play a little harder, play a little bigger when we have those really important guys out of our lineup.”
Tkachuk, Florida’s heart-and-soul top forward, was injured playing for the U.S. at the 4 Nations on Feb. 15. Ekblad, the top-four defenseman in his 11th season in the league, was suspended 20 games on March 10 for performance-enhancing drugs.
And the team knew Marchand would not be available right away after getting hurt March 1 in what turned out to be his final game with the Boston Bruins. Coach Paul Maurice said the 36-year-old was skating hard and could be back as soon as the end of this week, if not early April.
Even without those guys, the Panthers have allowed opponents to score just two goals a game during this stretch — tied for the fewest in the NHL.
“What separates them and why I think they’re the best defending team in the league is they protect the net front and the slot better than anybody in the NHL for my money,” Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery said before his team beat Florida. “And that’s partly the way that their structure is, so the system, but also the commitment to win your 1-on-1 (matchups) and protect that area is elite, elite, elite.”
Maurice thinks the Panthers have handled the situation really well, absent a clunker of a 3-1 defeat at Montreal. After losing to Washington, the affable coach who has been behind the bench for over 2,000 NHL games deadpanned that despite a sub-.500 road trip, “We won’t fold the season.”
Overall, he has been pleased.
“We’ve been pretty good,” Maurice said. “We’ve played playoff games without Bennett, without Barkov — with 2out a number of players. ... We just have some experience with it.”
Since hiring Maurice and trading for Tkachuk in the summer of 2023, Florida has won seven of eight playoff series while making back-to-back trips to the final and captured the first championship in franchise history. The hope is to do more of that after getting Marchand and Jones, who has been playing big minutes — over 25 a game — in Ekblad’s absence.
“He’s been great,” forward Jonah Gadjovich said of Jones. “He’s been great on the ice and off the ice. He’s a great guy, obviously a great player, as well, so we’re so happy to have him and his leadership around the locker room.”
Inside the locker room, Gadjovich said being without top players is no excuse, so he and his teammates are not treating it as such.
“Obviously we’re down a lot of guys right now, and I think we’re looking forward to having them back whenever they come back,” he said. “Whoever’s in the lineup just has to do their job. We all know how to play. We all know Panther hockey and what’s expected of us.”
The 48-19-4 Winnipeg Jets will host the 47-15-8 Washington Capitals from Canada Life Centre on Tuesday.
The highly-anticipated first vs. second affair will feature the league's No. 1 and 2 clubs squaring off for the final time this season.
Washington's Alex Ovechkin will continue his chase for Wayne Gretzky's all-time goal scoring record, while Winnipeg's Connor Hellebuyck will be back between the pipes looking to shut down the Russian sniper.
While the Capitals are 9-1-0 in their last 10 games, the Jets have seen things take a turn for the worst over the past few days. Losses to the lowly Vancouver Canucks and Buffalo Sabres highlighted a lacklustre week of performance.
And that's all before the biggest piece of news from the Jets' loss to Buffalo. Star winger Gabe Vilardi suffered an upper-body injury and is now considered out week-to-week. His status for the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs is also in question.
With Vilardi out due to injury, former Kings teammate Rasmus Kupari will draw in in place of Alex Iafallo (another Kings running mate) who has been promoted to Vilardi's spot on the top line. This adjustment will keep the second and third lines intact.
The defence pairs will remain the same with Logan Stanley back in on the blueline as Neal Pionk continues to recovery from a lower-body injury that has him also listed as week-to-week.
Winnipeg Jets' expected line combinations for Tuesday, March 25 vs. Washington:
Connor-Scheifele-Iafallo
Ehlers-Lowry-Appleton
Niederreiter-Namestnikov-Perfetti
Barron-Kupari-Tanev
Morrissey-DeMelo
Samberg-Schenn
Stanley-Miller
Hellebuyck
Injured: Vilardi, Pionk
Healthy scratches: Fleury, Heinola, Gustafsson
The St. Louis Blues have announced that they have signed forward Adam Jecho and defenseman Lukas Fischer to three-year entry-level contracts.
Jecho, 19, was selected by the Blues with the 95th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. The 6-foot-5 center has appeared in 56 games this season with the Edmonton Oil Kings of the WHL, posting 25 goals, 28 assists, and 53 points. This was after he had 23 goals and 47 points in 54 games with the Oil Kings this past campaign.
Fischer, on the other hand, was selected by the Blues with the 56th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. The 6-foot-3 defenseman has appeared in 51 games this season with the Sarnia Sting, recording 15 goals, 22 assists, 37 points, and 81 penalty minutes. In 2023-24 with Sarnia, he had six goals and 34 points in 68 contests.
Jecho and Fischer are two solid prospects in the Blues' system, so it is certainly a good thing that they have signed both of them to entry-level deals. It will be fascinating to see how much of an impact they make with the Blues later down the road from here.
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Toronto has 12 more games left in the regular season, including Tuesday's matchup against the Flyers.
The Maple Leafs are changing things up with optional morning skates as the playoffs approach.
Normally, if Toronto holds an optional skate the morning before a game, certain players get on the ice and participate in a few drills. It's more or less so they can get a feel of the puck on the game day before warmups.
However, the plan changed last Wednesday before their 2-1 win over the Colorado Avalanche. Toronto held an optional skate, but only healthy scratches and injured players took to the ice. (Max Domi briefly skated to get a couple of puck touches in.)
Maple Leafs' Craig Berube Explains Why Entire Playing Roster Didn't Take The Ice For Optional Skate Ahead Of Game Against AvalancheFor the first time this season, the Toronto Maple Leafs held an optional morning skate and nobody from the playing roster took the ice.
A similar sequence occurred on Tuesday morning ahead of their game against the Philadelphia Flyers: only players who weren't playing were on the ice for the optional morning skate.
"A lot of travel and hockey, obviously. But a lot of travel with us in the last month, I'd say. A lot of travel. And we're heading out again tomorrow," Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube said on Tuesday morning.
"We had a good practice yesterday, 30 minutes or more. A pretty good pace, so I don't think there's any need for anybody to go on the ice this morning. Yeah, if they want to go touch [the puck], goalies like to get some shots, whatever. But we're going to need the energy tonight in the game."
Pontus Holmberg, Max Pacioretty, Philippe Myers, and Joseph Woll were the four players on the ice during Tuesday's optional skate. That means David Kampf, an extra at practice on Monday, is projected to be in the lineup against the Flyers, and Holmberg is out.
#leafs sticking to only players who are not playing taking the optional. Pontus Holmberg appears to be the odd man out with David Kampf remaining in.
— David Alter (@dalter) March 25, 2025
Joseph Woll doing goalie work so Anthony Stolarz is the projected starter tonight.
@BodogCA pic.twitter.com/fHAbTa5iqD
Woll being on the ice means Anthony Stolarz is the projected starting goaltender against Philadelphia. Toronto's 4-3 win over the New York Rangers was Stolarz's first win since Feb. 28, also against the Rangers.
The 31-year-old has a 14-8-3 record and a .918 save percentage with the Maple Leafs this season. This will be his 11th game since returning from knee surgery on Feb. 6.
"It's huge. Anytime you're in a little bit of a skid, you want to break out of it," Stolarz said on Monday of his win against the Rangers. "As a goalie, the name of the game is winning games. My job is to stop more pucks than the guy down at the other end and that night I did.
"And like I said after that game, I liked my game, where I was at the last couple of games, it just boiled down to making that one extra save. And I think in New York, I was able to do that and keep it a two-goal lead for as long as possible. For me, it's just a building block and something I'm going to build on."
Toronto faces the Flyers on Tuesday before heading out on their California road trip on Wednesday, where they have three games in four nights against the San Jose Sharks, Los Angeles Kings, and Anaheim Ducks.
The Maple Leafs are two points behind the Florida Panthers for first in the Atlantic Division, with one game in hand.
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The Washington Capitals re-signed Jakob Chychrun to an eight-year contract at $9 million per season, the team announced on Tuesday.
Chychrun, 26, nearly doubles his current $4.6-million cap hit with what will be the longest contract of his career. The extension and his improvement on the scoresheet come almost nine months after the Capitals acquired him from the Ottawa Senators.
"Jakob is a proven, dynamic defenseman in the prime of his career who has established himself as one of the premier blueliners in the NHL," Capitals GM Chris Patrick said in a press release. “He is a perfect fit with our culture and vision for the future, and we couldn't be more thrilled that he will continue to be part of our organization for the next eight years."
Washington traded defenseman Nick Jensen and a 2026 third-round pick to the Senators for Chychrun last July 1.
Jensen is more defensive-minded than Chychrun, although he also has fast puck-moving ability as a right-hand shot for the Senators. The 34-year-old has 19 points in 60 games.
Chychrun, however, almost has as many goals as Jensen does points.
In 65 games for Washington, Chychrun has 18 goals and a career-high 43 points this campaign. He’s third in the NHL in goals among D-men, sitting behind the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Zach Werenski (20) and Colorado Avalanche star Cale Makar (26).
While the plus-minus rating never tells the full story, Chychrun’s plus-24 rating is by far the highest of his career, and he has a 52.15-percent Corsi-for percentage at 5-on-5, meaning the Capitals generate more chances-for than against when he’s on the ice. Only John Carlson’s 53.72-percent share is higher among Capitals defensemen.
Washington’s coaching staff has allowed Chychrun to focus more on the offensive side of his game rather than defense by pairing him with defensive defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk – and it’s worked for the team overall, considering its 2.54 goals against per game is the third-lowest in the NHL. Chychrun has started almost 61 percent of his shifts in the offensive zone at 5-on-5, compared to 49.84 percent with the Senators last season and 50.20 percent in 2022-23 between the Sens and Arizona Coyotes, according to naturalstattrick.com.
Jakob Chychrun On What Went Wrong For Him With The Ottawa Senators Last Year: 'I Don't Know, I Didn't Trade Myself'Chychrun returned to Ottawa this week as the top-scoring defenceman on the top team in the NHL and reflected on his time with the Senators.
The blueliner was one of the many new faces the Capitals added in the off-season, including Matt Roy on defense, Logan Thompson in net and Pierre-Luc Dubois at center. With their help, Washington leads the NHL by two points and has a game in hand over the second-place Winnipeg Jets.
Chychrun has 532 NHL games under his belt and is now under contract through the 2032-33 campaign. The Capitals were the first NHL team this season to clinch a playoff berth last Friday, which means Chychrun could appear in the post-season for just the second time in his career. He played nine games between a play-in round and the Western Conference quarterfinal with the Coyotes in the 2019-20 bubble playoffs, recording a goal in nine games.
- Jonathan Tovell contributed to this report.
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