Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Rest is a funny thing this time of year.
Too little rest, and even the best-conditioned teams will eventually begin to sputter and break down at the worst possible time. Too much recovery time, and the precision and crisp play needed for a long push through the Calder Cup Playoffs can fade quickly.
The Cleveland Monsters have already been off for more than a week since finishing off Syracuse in their North Division semifinal series with a 2-1 triple-overtime victory on May 3. And they don’t open the next round until Thursday, when the Toronto Marlies visit Rocket Arena.
The stretch to get to the division finals wasn’t always pretty. Cleveland lost five in a row to end March, and while their hold on a playoff spot never really came under serious threat, that slump certainly added some late-season stress. They managed to right themselves enough to finish the regular season on a 4-1-0-2 run, locking down third place in the division and a meeting with a Crunch team that was in contention for a division title right up until the final week.
Cleveland managed only a split at home to begin their division semifinal series, but they grinded out two overtime victories on the road to advance.
So it has been a hectic, demanding and pressure-filled stretch for the Monsters, meaning this extended break might have come at the perfect time. It is also an interesting period in the entire Columbus Blue Jackets organization, where the dynamic certainly extends to Cleveland.
Columbus head coach Rick Bowness had strong, pointed comments for his players at the end of the season, rather emphatically stating that he wanted a much better organizational culture. When someone like Bowness – whose coaching career began in 1982 as a player-coach with the AHL’s Sherbrooke Jets – speaks, it resonates strongly across the hockey world. His 21-11-5 record after taking over in Columbus in January underlined his message even more, and the Blue Jackets announced that he will return in 2026-27.
Organizational culture change often has its roots at the AHL level. After all, instilling those cultural values with first- or second-year players is different from having to change veterans. Cleveland, starting with head coach Trent Vogelhuber, is a crucial part of that effort. An Ohio native and a member of the organization for the better part of the last 20 years after being drafted by the Blue Jackets in 2007, Vogelhuber won a Calder Cup as a player with the Monsters in 2016, rejoined the club as an assistant coach in 2018 and took over as head coach in 2022.
Jet Greaves, Kirill Marchenko, Jake Christiansen and Denton Mateychuk headline the list of Blue Jackets who have developed under Vogelhuber in Cleveland. Luca Del Bel Belluz, Mikael Pyyhtiä and Luca Pinelli all saw time with the parent club this season. Colorado’s Nick Blankenburg, Buffalo’s Josh Dunne and Florida’s Daniil Tarasov have become NHL regulars elsewhere.
There are, to put it mildly, a lot of moving pieces in this organization right now, and an AHL head coach’s job is to manage those ever-changing factors.
And like many AHL head coaches, Vogelhuber is big on the concepts of building and process. The six-month regular season provides the practice time and 72 games reinforce those objectives. Come playoff time, a team’s habits must be second nature to have any success. After the series-clinching win in Syracuse, Vogelhuber thought back to a rough weekend in March in which the Monsters lost 6-2 and 6-3 to the Crunch.
“That was a humbling weekend,” Vogelhuber recalled. “And I remember we talked after that and said, ‘That’s a team we’re going to play, that’s a team we have to beat, and we’re going to build for the month left in the season to do it.’”
“There were ups and downs since then, for sure. But I’m proud of them. Proud of them for continuing to get better, continuing to trust me, and to keep fighting.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
