AHL Mid-Season Award Winners

As the AHL heads into the All-Star Classic, The Hockey News names its mid-season award winners for a variety of categories.

The AHL All-Star Classic is this weekend, meaning we're crossing the midway point of the season.

The Hockey News dives in to the major movers and shakers of the current campaign, and hands out the hardware for our AHL Mid-Season Awards. 

No player in the American Hockey League burns quite as hot as Texas Stars prospect Logan Stankoven. 

In his first year of pro hockey, the 47th overall pick of the 2021 NHL Entry draft leads all AHL players with 50 points in 39 games. That's good enough to top all AHL rookies, with Stankoven a full 16 points ahead of rookie runner-up Samu Tuomaala, with the 20-year-old also leading the 'A' in goals scored for a rookie with 20. 

The closest to matching his point total comes from linemate Mavrik Bourque with 47 points. Dallas Stars fans should be salivating at a dynamic future one-two offensive punch. 

At 27 years old, Adam Gaudette has found his scoring touch. 

The 2015 draft selection of the Vancouver Canucks has bounced around the National Hockey League and American League over the course of his pro career, but it's in the 'A' with Springfield in which the Mass native has found his offensive stride.

Gaudette leads all AHL players through the first half of the season with 24 goals in just 38 games, putting up a near point-per-game pace of 36 points in that span. 

Runner-up Pierrick Dube has one less goal, 23, but in 44 games with Hershey. 

The carousel of goalies in Washington could be drawing to a close, that is if the dynamite tandem in the American Hockey League have anything to say about it.

Clay Stevenson, 24, has emerged from the ECHL to become a can't miss goaltending prospect in the American League. 

Though 22 games the undrafted Stevenson holds an immaculate 1.69 GAA and .938 SP, with six shutouts and 16 wins. His partner-in-crime Hunter Shepard has been equally impressive, with 17 wins and one shutout in 20 games, owning a 2.26 GAA and .911 SP. One or both could see serious time in the NHL in the coming years.

Stevenson has developed his game gradually in the AHL and should be ready for bigger opportunities in the near future.

Brandt Clarke is for real.

The eighth overall draft selection of the Los Angeles Kings has been as good as advertised to start the first full year of his pro career. Through 30 games with the Ontario Reign, Clarke put up seven goals and 32 points in just 30 games.

He's spent some time with the big club in LA, nothing an assist in six games with the Kings and showing flashes of just what fans in the City of Angels can expect from their brilliant blueliner for years to come.

To say the Hershey Bears are on a run would be a misnomer. 

Already the most decorated team in league history, the Bears have followed up their Calder Cup winning campaign in 2022-23 with pure dominance this season.

The club currently sits in a comfortable first in the league with an unreal 35-7-0-2 record, 15 points above the distant second-place Admirals. As of press time, the club is on a 7-1-0-2 run in their past ten contests.

The man behind the bench, Todd Nelson, won his second Calder Cup and first with the Bears in his first season behind the Hershey bench last season, leading the club to a  44-19-9 finish with a 14-6 playoff run. Hershey could eclipse that impressive total this season, with Nelson the runaway favourite for coach of the year.