The Toronto Marlies captured the Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as the American Hockey League’s regular-season champions on Friday evening with a 4-3 overtime victory over the Lake Erie Monsters at Ricoh Coliseum.
The Marlies (51-15-5-0, 107 points) will finish with the best record in the AHL for the first time in their 11-year history, and will have home-ice advantage for as long as they advance in the 2016 Calder Cup Playoffs.
Still with five games remaining on their schedule, Toronto’s 51 victories and 280 goals scored are both franchise records. The North Division title they also clinched on Friday is their fourth division crown in the last five years and sixth overall.
The Kilpatrick Trophy winners have gone on to win the Calder Cup four times in the last six seasons (Hershey 2010, Norfolk 2012, Texas 2014, Manchester 2015).
The trophy, instituted in 1997, is named for the late Macgregor Kilpatrick, a longtime member of the AHL Board of Governors and a 2010 inductee into the AHL Hall of Fame.
