BRENT FLAHR TAKES THE REINS IN IOWA
Oct 5, 2015By Tom Witosky | Follow Tom @toskyAHLWild
If Brent Flahr needed references to become the Iowa Wild’s general manager, his list could have looked like this:
- Mikael Granlund, 1st round draft choice in 2010, Minnesota Wild.
- Jason Zucker, 2nd round draft choice in 2010, Minnesota Wild.
- Jonas Brodin, 1st round draft choice in 2011, Minnesota Wild
- Matt Dumba, 1st round draft choice in 2012, Minnesota Wild.
Last week, the 41-year-old British Columbia native officially took the helm of Minnesota’s American Hockey League franchise with a simple goal == make it a Calder Cup playoff contender after two seasons of sitting it out.
As the club official substantially responsible for drafting and developing the future of the NHL Wild since 2010, the reason behind Flahr’s selection is obvious – he has a good record of evaluating young players with the potential to become NHL players within the Minnesota system.
Granlund, Zucker, Brodin and Dumba have either become or on their way to becoming established NHL players who are contributing to the Wild’s rapid development into playoff contenders the past two seasons. Only Zucker and Dumba played in Iowa and not for long before going up I-35 to the big club.
Not only have many of the Wild’s recent top draft choices become regulars on Minnesota’s lines, but other youngsters like Tyler Graovac, Brett Bulmer, Gustav Olofsson, Kurtis Gabriel and Zack Mitchell appear to be on the cusp of becoming NHLers.
“It’s exciting in a lot of ways,” Flahr said. “What’s even better is that next year we are going to see a large signing pool of draft prospects come on line.”
The Princeton graduate played defenseman for four years for his alma mater, then joined the Florida Panthers organization where he spent eight seasons in a variety of posts including director of hockey operations for the San Antonio Rampage.
From 2003 to 2007, Flahr was amateur scout for the Anaheim Ducks and then spent two seasons as director of hockey operations for the Ottawa Senators. His success in helping Minnesota has garnered him some predictions that he become an NHL general manager some day.
Flahr said that the rapid advancement of players like Zucker, Dumba, and Granlund played a big factor in the outcome of the last two seasons both in Minnesota and Iowa.
“If you look at the last couple of years, we fast-tracked a large number of our prospects which is healthy because a number of them are very good players,” he said. “That’s been good for Minnesota but at the same time they skipped the American League process, which hasn’t been so good for here.”
Dumba, now one of Minnesota’s top four defensemen, is a prime example of what happened to Iowa, Flahr said. Dumba played only 20 games in Iowa, scoring five goals and nine assists and getting named as an AHL All-Star, before Minnesota needed him.
“Dumba made the jump right away too which we didn’t really anticipate,” he said. “So what happened was that it thinned the talent pool down here that we were relying upon to carry the load down here. Unfortunately, they weren’t here.”
As a result, club officials moved strongly in the off-season in two directions. First, it emphasized signing of veteran players with strong resumes as proving leadership to their AHL teams. On top of that list was Maxime Fortunus, who was released unexpectedly by the Dallas Stars.
“Max Fortunus is going be a huge addition for us here. He is really important and not just for what he can do on the ice,” Flahr explained. “On the ice, he has been a team captain in this league for a long time, won championships. Off the ice, he can teach the young guys how to be pros, how to take care of themselves and how to win.”
Second, the club agreed with head coach John Torchetti’s decision to hire veteran AHL assistant coach David Cunniff as associate head coach and NHL veteran Pascal Rheaume to round out the coaching staff. Torchetti became Iowa’s head coach in November of 2014.
“Torch has hired two coaches that we believe will make a big difference,” Flahr said. “David is very experienced at this level and that is a great help. Pascal is a very experienced player, but is a young coach and was exactly what we were looking for.”
With the opening of the AHL season days away, Flahr said that decisions in Minnesota on its roster should have a good impact in Iowa.
“We have a couple of young guys still battling for spots up there so we are going to see some up and down early this season,” Flahr said. “Someone is going to have to come down and that should help here.”
One problem likely to go without Minnesota providing a player is deciding on two goalies to begin the season. Rookies Stephen Michalek and Brady Hoffman struggled in Traverse City resulting in Flahr and others contemplating bringing in a veteran goalie.
Three goalies remain in Minnesota – Devin Dubnyk, Darcy Kuemper and Nicholas Backstrom. All are likely to stay there until the Wild front office moves one of them to another team.
“Dubnyk established himself more or less as the number one goalie last year and Kuemper is a good young goalie. Backstrom is the longtime veteran. We’d like to move one and help facilitate the process up there, but it is hard to do,” Flahr said.
With the Wild’s move this year and what’s in the club’s player pipeline, Flahr said the job will be something of a challenge.
“I am excited,” Flahr said. “Our number one goal is to develop players for the NHL down here, but to do that you have to learn how to win and that is going to be the focus. It hasn’t been a lot of fun the last couple of years, but we are going to what we can to help that out not only this year, but going forward.”