Kansas City was one series away from winning a Kelly Cup last season. Can they get over the hump in 2024-25?
The Kansas City Mavericks almost had a perfect ending in 2023-24. They put together their best regular season in club history, capturing the Brabham Cup as the ECHL’s best team with a 54-12-4-2 record. They won their first-ever Mountain Division title and took home the Taylor Trophy as Western Conference champions.
The playoffs were shaping up to be more of the same. The Mavericks swept Tulsa in the first round, dispatched the defending Western Conference champion Idaho Steelheads in the Mountain Division Finals and beat the Toledo Walleye in the Western Conference Finals.
Then, Florida happened.
The Mavericks’ dreams of winning their first Kelly Cup in team history came to an end when the Florida Everblades took them out in five games, becoming the first team in ECHL history to win three straight Cups.
So much for a storybook ending.
Looking Back With Pride
As difficult as that series loss was (and still is) to swallow, Mavericks general manager and head coach Tad O’Had is still able to look back with pride at what his team accomplished.
“How it ended was very difficult,” O’Had admitted. “We wanted to bring (the series) back to Kansas City for a Game 6. We thought if we did that, we could shift the momentum. Ultimately, we didn’t achieve our main goal. With that said, we achieved a great deal of success. My goal when I came here five years ago was we wanted to be considered one of the top teams in the ECHL. We’re continuing to build towards that.”
The 13 post-season wins by the Mavericks were a franchise record. The conference championship was also the first in the team’s 15-year history. The 54 wins were the most in team history and the fourth-most ever in the ECHL. Their 114 points ranked fifth-best in the 36-year history of the league.
A lot has to go right for that kind of achievement. For O’Had, the biggest challenge was keeping the team focused, especially after clinching a playoff spot early.
“We were having a lot of team success,” O’Had explained. “With team success, players want to see individual success. We just needed to continue to reinforce the message (that) individual success will come as the team continues to do things the right way.”
Learning From The Best
O’Had is starting his fifth year behind the Mavericks’ bench after spending seven seasons with the Everblades as an assistant coach and associate head coach. He attributes a lot of his current accomplishments with the Mavericks to the lessons he learned under head coach and director of hockey operations Brad Ralph and team president Craig Brush.
“The culture, their eagerness to win at all costs, their organization and structure… I learned so many things,” O’Had said. “(Associate coach Riley) Weselowski and I have taken a lot of those things here to Kansas City and we want to continue to build on that.”
Reshaping The Roster
O’Had’s next challenge is duplicating the explosive offensive production, stingy defense and lights-out goaltending of last season. It won’t be easy replacing the scoring production of center/left winger Patrick Curry, who finished second in MVP voting and set the Mavericks ECHL franchise record in goals (39) and points (87). The club also lost forward Jacob Hayhurst (76 points) and right winger Jeremy McKenna (54).
Five Mavericks finished in the top six in franchise history in points for a season: Curry, rookie forward Cade Borchardt (77), Hayhurst, and rookie center Max Andreev (73). The team scored 305 goals, a new regular-season franchise high.
O’Had still returns 11 players from last season including Andreev, who set a Kansas City ECHL franchise record with 54 assists as a rookie. Borchardt, who finished behind Andreev with 53 assists, is also back for his second season.
Among the Mavericks’ new faces in camp are forward Damien Giroux, a fifth-round pick (155th overall) by the Minnesota Wild in the 2018 NHL Draft. Giroux potted seven goals in 17 games for the Jacksonville Icemen last season.
Forward Jackson Berezowski also joins the Mavericks. In 59 games with the Newfoundland Growlers last season, Berezowski tallied 54 points (18-36-54).
Defense and goaltending were big keys to the Mavericks’ great run in 2023-24. Three defensemen finished in the league’s top four in plus-minus: Jake McLaughlin and Ryan Jones (+30) and Marc-Olivier Duquette (+29).
McLaughlin is the only one of those three returning, but O’Had is counting on David Noel, Justin MacPherson, Nate Knoepke, Jay Powell and others to keep the defense solid.
In net, the Mavericks had one of the most dominant trio of goaltenders in recent memory. Jack LaFontaine and Dillon Kelley each recorded 16 victories, while Cale Morris had 21. It was the first time in ECHL history a team had three goalies win 16 or more games in a season.
LaFontaine will be back in net this season after posting a 2.77 goals-against average and .911 save percentage. Kelley and Morris both retired, so O’Had brought in Victor Ostman (NHL/AHL affiliated contract) and Jake Kucharski (PTO).
Taking The Next Step
No two seasons are alike. It will be a tall order for the Mavericks to equal or surpass the success they had in 2023-24. But there’s more than one way to win a Kelly Cup.
Ask the Everblades, who finished third in the South Division en route to their third consecutive title. The path to the ultimate goal, according to O’Had, lies in each member of the team improving a little each day.
“The one thing we stress in training camp is get one percent better every day,” O’Had said. “I feel we have identified our roster and what we needed to do differently this off-season. We’ve gone out and adjusted a few of those areas. As coaches, we’ve grown. We’ve gotta continue to improve in all aspects. If we’re able to do that and stick with our principles, we can have success and put ourselves in a position to ultimately win a championship.”