Hutchinson Named AHL Defenseman Of The Year
April 15, 2008 - ECHL (ECHL) News Release
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - The American Hockey League announced that
former Toledo defenseman Andrew
Hutchinson has been selected as the outstanding defenseman for 2007-08.
The ECHL has affiliations with 26 of the 29 teams in the AHL, marking the
seventh consecutive season that it has had affiliations with 20 or more
teams in the AHL. In the last six seasons the ECHL has had more call ups to
the AHL than all other professional leagues combined with more than 2,300
call ups involving more than 1,200 players. In each of the last three
seasons there have been more than 225 players who have played in both the
ECHL and the AHL in the same season. The AHL has 10 former ECHL coaches who
are head coaches and 14 others who are assistant coaches while almost 500
players with ECHL experience have played in the league this season.
Seven times in the last eight years the winner of the AHL Coach of the
Year award has been a former ECHL coach including the last three selections
with Scott
Gordon, Mike
Haviland and Kevin
Dineen. Former ECHL coaches won the award four consecutive years from
2001-04 with Don
Granato, Bruce
Cassidy, Geoff
Ward and Claude
Noel. The first former ECHL coach to win the award was current Carolina
Hurricanes head coach Peter
Laviolette in 1999.
Former ECHL players won the CCM/AHL Player of the Month award in November (Martin St. Pierre), December (Pascal Pelletier) and January (Grant Stevenson). Trevor Smith, who played in the ECHL with Utah this season, was the Rbk Edge/AHL Rookie of the Month for January while John Curry, who played this year for both Las Vegas and Wheeling, was the winner in December. The Rbk Hockey/AHL Player of the Week award was won eight times by former ECHL players.
For the 18th year in a row in 2007 there was a former ECHL
player on the Calder Cup champion as Hamilton had a record 12 players with
ECHL experience on its roster.
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