There’s an aesthetic to covering hockey in June. Yes, hockey and June seem contradictory, and for casual sports fans, they wonder why and how there is hockey at this time of the year (how do they make the ice?). For fans, this is the best time of the year. 

The games come with the highest stakes. The day-to-day of covering or watching a hockey game in June means longer sunsets and a day out in the sun, capped off with a night at the air-conditioned arena. 

That was the setting for Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final, the game that sent the Toronto Marlies to the Eastern Conference Final and ended the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins' season. The first thought when looking at the Penguins coming up short in this series is what went wrong but the focus when looking back on their season, especially at this point, is what went right. Let’s start there. 

A cliche that’s heard a lot around the American Hockey League is that teams are tight-knit groups. The league is built for teams to come together more so than the NHL because the players travel together and are together off the ice as well. 

It’s something Ethan Bear talked about at his 2025 exit interview with the Hershey Bears: that there’s not much to do in the small town, and the players hang out with each other most of the time. It’s also something that can be on a bingo card when asking a player, “What makes this team special?” with the response usually being, “We’re a tight-knit group. 

The Penguins lived up to that label. It was noticeable how they interacted off the ice at home. It was more noticeable in how they acted on the road. After an early-season game in Hartford, the team had its postgame food like most teams do. It’s moments like these where you see how teams instill culture in their players from the grab-and-go pizzas that force players to hop on the bus to the buffets where they sit at the roundtables. After this game in particular, the Penguins players weren’t in a rush, and head coach Kirk MacDonald was seen eating alongside his players, chatting about the win and other happenings. 

These moments are seen as small and insignificant to some. They go a long way toward building a team culture and togetherness. Todd Nelson talked about how he’d host a pig roast before the season with the entire team to get to know the players. MacDonald went out of his way to get to know his roster, and it came in handy as the team went through plenty of turnover throughout the season. 

The Penguins built their team with team bonding and chemistry in mind. Yes, talent is the priority and was what the front office looked for first but they’d look for good character players who would fit in with the locker room. It built a close group that was consistently near the top of the league and capable of replacing a player who was called up to Pittsburgh or sent down to Wheeling without experiencing much of a dropoff. 

Will the Penguins be back? One of the toughest things in the AHL is to remain great year in and year out. Every team goes through an overhaul, and not only looks different when the season begins but also when it ends. However, Pittsburgh’s front office, led by GM Kyle Dubas and assistant Jason Spezza, is building a winning culture in Wilkes-Barre that’s given them a better prospect pipeline and accelerated their timeline on a youth movement. 

The Toronto Marlies have put together quite the journey to the Final. They finished in fourth place in the North Division and only won 36 of their 72 regular-season games. Yet, when the playoffs rolled around, they put it all together. 

The journey starts with the coaching staff and the job they did. John Gruden set the tone and preached playing the right way. It’s hard to buy into playing playoff hockey, and it resulted in growing pains throughout the season. The players finally believed in the system in time for the playoffs, when they needed it most. It’s not just Gruden, either; the staff has some great hockey minds in it, some of which are sure to land NHL jobs in the near future. 

The Marlies were also one of the teams that bet on the veterans. In a league that devalues them, viewing the aging player as over the hill while looking at the future and the next best prospect, the Marlies had their veterans lead the way. They brought in Benoit-Olivier Groulx and Vinni Lettieri in the offseason to lead the team both on and off the ice. They were two of the leading scorers in the playoffs and set the tone for the Calder Cup run. It’s a model that successful teams have, and more teams should emulate. 

This environment allows prospects to develop. The winning and playoff experience allowed Easton Cowan and the rookies to take steps forward and look more like NHLers than they did months ago. Yes, the ice time is lower, and that hurts in the short term but in the long run, it’s helped build a winning culture. 

The Marlies built a winning culture in Toronto. It’s something that will give the Toronto Maple Leafs hope as they enter a new era. The NHL can desperately use a youth movement, and thanks to their AHL team, one might be on the way. 

Playoff hockey is different. The games are more physical, and space is hard to come by. Another layer to playoff hockey is that the games slow down. Specifically, the hot and humid weather outdoors makes the ice choppy and tougher to play on. The puck moves more slowly, it takes odd bounces, and the players don’t fly up the ice like they do midseason. 

The teams know at this time in the season that the ice isn’t great. So, it’s about adjusting to the surface. When the Abbotsford Canucks won the Calder Cup title last season, they won Game 6 in Charlotte on a 102-degree day. When they built up a 2-1 lead, the plan was to force the Charlotte Checkers to go the full length of the ice, and it worked as they won the game and the championship. 

The Marlies followed a similar blueprint in their series against the Penguins. They got the puck in deep and played a chip-and-chase style to get their forecheck going. The ice favored that type of game plan, and more importantly, the Marlies wanted to limit the Penguins' speed-based game from gashing them on the rush. “We just knew that they're still going to be dangerous, regardless if we didn’t manage the puck,” Gruden noted after the series-clinching game. 

The Penguins also adjusted to the ice. “It’s about getting there,” MacDonald noted after Game 2 when the offense struggled and notably couldn’t move the puck up the ice. They were a team that generated offense off the rush all season and loved to make centering or cross-ice passes to find open looks. Those plays weren’t going to happen in the Eastern Conference Final. 

The Final starts this week, and the teams will do what they can to have the ice ready. The reality is that both teams must pivot and focus more on a North-South style while leaning into their forecheck. 

Last week’s column looked at the Penguins' low playoff attendance. Fans, media members, scouts, and people who travel around the league all provided their theories and possible explanations for why the team struggled to draw in the playoffs, a time when the arena should be packed. 

That perspective didn’t include the Penguins' side of things. They reached out to The Hockey News this week and responded to the points made in the article. The team provided plenty of insight that can become a story in itself (and it might) but here are three big points. 

The Penguins' front office and the town have a lot on their plate heading into the summer. The question they’ll ask themselves, if they haven’t already, is how they can bring more fans to the arena. 

It’s worth noting that the Penguins aren’t the only team in the AHL that struggles with attendance. Their issue was put under the spotlight because they were winning, and now that the on-ice product is worth watching, the standard has changed. The playoff run gives them the momentum to build off of, where the region started expressing greater interest in the team, and it was on everyone’s mind when they were two wins away from a Calder Cup Final. So, they have an opportunity to build off of something special. 

The Chicago Wolves pulled off a remarkable series comeback. They entered Game 6 without their starting goaltender for the playoff run and had to rely on Amir Miftakhov, a backup who had only played in 28 games this season, to save the day. 

The Wolves not only won Game 6 with a comeback victory, winning 3-2 after trailing 2-0 early on, but they also won Game 7 to take the series. Both wins it’s worth noting came on the road against the Colorado Eagles, who entered the series with a 6-0 record on their home ice. 

It sets the stage for a thrilling Final between the Marlies and the Wolves. Both teams were counted out early in the season, which shows how quickly things change in the AHL, not just from month to month but week to week. For the Marlies, it would be their first title since 2018. If the Wolves win, it adds to their legacy of success in the AHL, their fourth Calder Cup title since 2002, and their first since 2022. An added layer is that the Wolves and Carolina Hurricanes are still in play to become the first team to win the Calder Cup and Stanley Cup in the same year since the Albany River Rats and New Jersey Devils in 1995.