Calgary Wranglers to face Tucson Roadrunners in first round of Calder Cup playoffs

The Wranglers finished the 2023-24 regular season with a 35-28-6-3 record and 79 points, good enough for seventh place in the AHL’s Pacific Division. The Roadrunners went 43-23-4-2 and 92 points, slotting into second place. They’re facing off in a best-of-three series with games this coming Wednesday, Friday and (if necessary) Sunday, all in Tucson to save on travel expenses in the opening round. Puck drop is 8 p.m. MT (Calgary) time and the games can be streamed on AHL TV.

The AHL expanded and modified their playoff structure, expanding from 16 to 23 teams and including all but the two lowest finishers in each division. Each division has a modified play-in structure, which produces four teams to face off in the division semi-final round.

The Wranglers and Roadrunners met four times during the regular season, with each team winning twice. With both team’s parent club missing the Stanley Cup playoffs, both clubs received an injection of players from the NHL in recent days: the Flames returned Dustin Wolf, Ilya Solovyov, Adam Klapka and Matt Coronato to the Wranglers, while the Roadrunners recieved Vladislav Kolyachonok, Michael Kesselring, Aku Raty, Dylan Guenther and Josh Doan from the Coyotes. (Tucson also added Conor Geekie from the WHL’s Swift Current Broncos.)

This is the third consecutive season that the Flames’ AHL affiliate has qualified for the Calder Cup playoffs.

• In 2021-22 the Stockton Heat won the Pacific Division and beat Bakersfield and Colorado before losing to the Chicago Wolves, the eventual league champions, in the conference final round.
• In 2022-23 the Wranglers won the Pacific Division and beat Abbotsford before being eliminated by Coachella Valley in the division final round.

We’ll have more on the Wranglers’ run through the Calder Cup playoffs as the story unfolds.