AHL grads at World Championships

updated May 11

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … While the 2012 Calder Cup Playoffs march on, hockey’s annual IIHF World Championships are being held in Helsinki, Finland, and Stockholm, Sweden. The initial rosters for the tournament, which began Friday, feature 140 American Hockey League graduates representing their countries and competing for medals.

All 16 participating countries have at least one AHL alumnus on board and the list includes 26 former American Hockey League All-Stars, among them Zdeno Chara (Slovakia), Teddy Purcell (Canada), Kari Lehtonen (Finland), Niklas Kronwall (Sweden), Bobby Ryan (United States), Tomas Plekanec (Czech Republic) and Lars Eller (Denmark).

A total of 16 participants played in the American Hockey League during the 2011-12 season, including 2012 First Team AHL All-Star right wing Kyle Palmieri (United States) of the Syracuse Crunch and Cam Atkinson (United States) of the Springfield Falcons, who joined Palmieri at the 2012 AHL All-Star Classic. Richard Bachman (United States) and Philip Larsen (Denmark) both spent time with the Texas Stars this season; Tomas Tatar (Slovakia) was Grand Rapids’ co-leader in scoring in 2011-12; Justin Krueger (Germany) and Justin Faulk (United States) spent time on the Charlotte Checkers’ blue line this year; and Adirondack’s Oskars Bartulis (Latvia), Chicago’s Antoine Roussel (France) and Binghamton’s Stephane Da Costa (France) are also competing.

The World Championships rosters also feature former Calder Cup champions Mikhail Grabovski (Belarus), Patrick Sharp (Canada), Kaspars Daugavins (Latvia), Staffan Kronwall (Sweden), Roman Wick (Switzerland) and Joey Crabb (United States).

AHL experience can be found behind the bench as well, where former Louis A.R. Pieri Award winners Scott Gordon (head coach, USA) and Guy Boucher (assistant coach, Canada) are helping lead their countries. Current Lake Erie Monsters head coach David Quinn is serving as an assistant for Team USA; Kirk Muller, who began the 2011-12 season as head coach of the Milwaukee Admirals, is assisting the Canadian team; and Latvia head coach Ted Nolan, Finland assistant Pasi Nurminen and Slovakia assistant Jergus Baca are all former Calder Cup champions.

AHL Alumni on World Championship Rosters (as of 5/4/12)

Belarus (4)
Vladimir Denisov, D
Konstantin Koltsov, F
Mikhail Grabovski, F
Andrei Mezin, G

Canada (13)
Jamie Benn, F
*Jay Bouwmeester, D
Alexandre Burrows, F
Devan Dubnyk, G
Jordan Eberle, F
Ryan Getzlaf, F
Duncan Keith, D
Andrew Ladd, F
Corey Perry, F
*Teddy Purcell, F
*Patrick Sharp, F
Marc-Edouard Vlasic, D
Cam Ward, G