The Charlotte Checkers won 44 games last season, reached the playoffs for the eighth straight year and were out in three games. They start again Saturday at 6 p.m. against the Hershey Bears in Pennsylvania, with the same head coach, without the player who led them in scoring and with 11 players who were in an NHL training camp a week ago.
Geordie Kinnear, the coach, has had five months to think about how it ended. He told the team's website last week that the summer made clear "what went wrong, what I didn't do well, what the group didn't do well."
"I own my mistakes, they need to own theirs and we need to move forward," he said. He did not list them.
How the roster gets made
The Checkers play in the American Hockey League, one step below the NHL, as the top affiliate of the Florida Panthers. Most of the roster comes from Florida. On Monday the NHL club trimmed its training camp and assigned 29 players to Charlotte. On Thursday the Checkers sent five players on to the Savannah Ghost Pirates, their own affiliate in the ECHL, a league one level further down.
Eleven of the 29 had to clear waivers first, which means every other NHL team had the chance to claim them before Florida could send them to the minors. None was claimed. They are forwards Nate Bastian, Johnny Beecher, Angus Crookshank, Sam Lafferty, Cole Reinhardt, Cole Schwindt and Kai Schwindt, and defensemen Tobias Bjornfot, Casey Fitzgerald, Alex Petrovic and Donovan Sebrango.
Several bring long NHL records. Lafferty, 31, has played nearly 400 NHL games, according to the club. Bastian has more than 300. Petrovic, 34, has 323. Sebrango played 40 games for Florida last season, and Cole Schwindt played 29. Reinhardt scored six goals in 15 games for Florida after it claimed him off waivers in March.
For Cole Schwindt it is a return. He had 40 points as a Charlotte rookie in 2021-22.
Who left
Ben Steeves led the team last season with 23 goals and 45 points. Florida traded him to New Jersey on June 30 in a five-player deal. Crookshank came back in the same trade. He scored 24 goals for Utica of the AHL last season and, according to the club, has scored at least 20 in each of the last four AHL seasons.
Trevor Carrick, last season's captain, signed with EHC Red Bull Munich in Germany. Jack Studnicka signed with Philadelphia. Mike Benning and Jake Livingstone both signed with Calgary. Goaltender Louis Domingue signed with a club in Europe, HC Bolzano.
Who is back
Jack Devine, 23, had 43 points in 63 games as a rookie. That was second on the team, and he led it in assists. Brian Pinho, 31, had 34 points.
"I found last year that when we were consistently playing our game we were a tough team to beat," Pinho told the team's website as camp opened.
Gracyn Sawchyn, Florida's second-round pick in 2023, had 23 points in 35 games in a season that included three months out with an injury.
In goal, Cooper Black played 42 games and won 25 of them, with a goals-against average of 2.47. The Checkers ranked in the top five in the league in goals allowed per game, according to the club. Behind Black are Kirill Gerasimyuk, who had four shutouts as a rookie, and Tyler Muszelik, a first-year pro from the University of Connecticut.
Center Brett Chorske has an injury and has been practicing in a yellow no-contact jersey. He will likely miss the start of the season, according to the club.
One name is missing. Sandis Vilmanis, who scored four goals against Hershey in April, was not among the 29 players Florida assigned on Monday and is not on the roster the Checkers posted Friday.
Behind the bench
Kinnear, 53, is starting what the club counts as his 10th season as a head coach in the Florida organization. Florida hired him for the 2016-17 season to coach their top affiliate, which was then in Massachusetts, and he came to Charlotte when the affiliation moved in 2020.
Last season's team went 44-23-5-0, meaning 44 wins, 23 losses in regulation and five in overtime, and finished third in the Atlantic Division. Then it lost a best-of-three first round to the Springfield Thunderbirds, two games to one.
Kinnear has a new assistant. Jamie Tardif spent the last four seasons as an assistant coach with the Hartford Wolf Pack, the team Charlotte hosts in its home opener. Patrick Dallaire, the new goaltending coach, spent the last 11 years coaching goalies in Germany's top league.
The first two weeks
The season starts with four road games. Charlotte plays at Hershey on Saturday at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., at Providence on Oct. 10 and at Springfield on Oct. 11.
The home opener is Friday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. against Hartford at Bojangles Coliseum. Tickets are on sale.
Every game streams on FloHockey, a subscription service. The full schedule has all 72 games, and results will be posted on the Checkers page after each one.