For Tucson Roadrunners’ head coach Jay Varady, the American Hockey League’s prescribed holiday break feels, in most years, like the midway point of the season — even if under the most common circumstances it’s not quite that divided.
With the AHL’s schedule starting mid-October and ending in April, teams play more games after the calendar turns to Jan. 1.
Even still, for Varady, “Christmas always feels like halfway through the season.
“You always kind of come back and think, ‘Hey, we’re going to make this a really good second half,’” he said.
But this year, after a rush of postponements due to league COVID protocols and travel concerns across the U.S. Canadian border, things are even more out of whack than usual in the AHL.
As the Roadrunners prepare to open their post-holiday portion of the schedule at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday against the Stockton Heat in Tucson Arena, they’ll do so having played the fewest games of any AHL Western Conference team. The Roadrunners’ 21 games so far — roughly 31% of their expected 68-game schedule — is tied for the fewest played among the 31 teams.
For comparison, after Tuesday and Wednesday matchups with Stockton, the Roadrunners are slated to welcome Colorado to Tucson Arena on Saturday and Sunday. Colorado has already played a division-high 28 games. And, yet, while Tucson’s .534 win percentage puts the Roadrunners two spots ahead of Colorado (.518) in the Pacific Division standings, the Eagles have seven more points (29-22) due to the largesse of games already played.
“Now you look at it, and you’re 20 games in and you’re like, ‘whoa, that’s only a third of the season. We’ve still got some work to do here,” Varady said.
That’s all part and parcel to the Roadrunners, who saw their two games prior to the holiday break, a scheduled road trip to Abbotsford, British Columbia, postponed by the AHL due to travel concerns. The club’s two games post-break — would-be matchups with San Diego in Tucson on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2 — were also postponed due to league COVID protocols affecting San Diego’s lineup.
Varady said being pliable — not just in relation to the will-they-or-won’t-they of the upcoming schedule, but also in regard to his team’s roster makeup — is more than a necessity at this point, in this particular season.
As the Roadrunners returned to Tucson Arena for practice last week, there were days, Varady said, when he had as few as 12 players on the ice.
COVID protocols weren’t the culprit, though. Rather, the re-implemented NHL taxi squad program had a bevy of Roadrunners moving up and down Interstate 10 to ensure the Arizona Coyotes, the Roadrunners’ parent club, had enough skaters.
Since the last time the Roadrunners played — a 4-3 overtime road win over Ontario on Dec. 18 — Tucson’s roster has been hit with 34 different transactions. That includes leading scorers Matias Maccelli nabbing his first NHL call-up, and last year’s top goal producer, Michael Carcone, earning his first career NHL ice time.
Blake Speers, Boko Imama, Vladislav Kolyachonok, Jan Jenik, Cam Crotty and Josef Kořenář were among those either recalled to the Coyotes outright, or assigned to the NHL club’s taxi squad.
“As a coaching staff, I think it was really helpful we went through bubble process,” Varady said of his staff, assistants Steve Potvin and John Slaney, being part of the Coyotes’ efforts to return to action amid ever-changing protocols and COVID-related expectations in Summer 2020. “A lot of our Tucson players were there. And literally, the protocol seemed like it was changing every day. Two guys can go on the ice together, then the next week, six guys can go on the ice. Then it was eight guys, and 10. And then groups of 15.
“You had to find the right work-to-rest ratio,” he added. “We were all kind of involved in that process, which I think was really helpful for us.”
While the Roadrunners (10-9-2-0) enter Tuesday’s matchup with the first-place Heat (19-3-2-1) as the only team to defeat Stockton more than once this season. Varady entered this week still not totally certain what the core of his lineup would look like for the back-to-back midweek set.
“You know what? I have no idea actually,” he said. “(Roadrunners General Manager John Ferguson) is working incredibly hard to make sure we have enough players here.
“But there’s a lot of variables. Usually, in a normal situation, you have the Coyotes’ injuries which affect your situation. And then you have the Rapid City injuries that affect the guys you can call up,” he added, referencing Tucson’s ECHL affiliate, the South Dakota-based Rapid City Rush. “That’s the normal season. Now, we have COVID protocol at all three places, injuries in all three places and also the fact that when you move a guy, there’s testing that has to take place. So there’s a lot of pieces every day.”
