The forced reconciliation of the Chicago Wolves and Carolina Hurricanes isn't working, but they have no other choices

Some thoughts on the statements that came out of Chicago this weekend.

The Chicago Wolves and Carolina Hurricanes forced reconciliation is already off to a rocky start.

On Saturday, when the Wolves hosted the Milwaukee Admirals, the Wolves broadcast featured an interview with owner and chairmen Don Levin. Levin took the opportunity to fire shots at the Hurricanes and first-year Carolina GM Eric Tulsky.

(Side note, thanks to Andrew Rinaldi from the The Calder Times for pulling the video of the interview so we could all see it.)

Levin talked about how the Hurricanes gave Chicago a bad team during the 2022-23 season, effectively killing any chance of the Wolves repeating at Calder Cup champions.

He forcefully said, “Carolina in 2 minutes, and me in one minute would change partners," about the current arrangement this season and he took a shot Tulsky’s credentials because he never played in the NHL, and then questioned the credentials of Hurricanes assistant GMs Tyler Dellow and Darren Yorke, who also never played in the NHL.

“I’m concerned this year,” Levin said. “Billy Beane started (everything) being statistics and analytics. But he never won a championship and here we’ve got three general managers that have never played a hockey game. I’m used to having a general manager that’s won two Stanley Cups. So I don’t know, maybe I’ll be taught a lesson that it’s different. I don’t know they can play this game using statistics.”

That’s a lot to unpack from Levin, who basically confirmed everything we knew about how the AHL and NHL forced him to re-affiliate with Carolina after one independent season.

For starters we need to understand Levin, who has owned the Chicago Wolves since he helped found them in 1994.

Levin believes in a world where minor-league hockey is equally as important to the NHL. Throughout AHL and IHL mergers, the Wolves have effectively maintained a policy of trying to win championships. Development has always been secondary, and for the first 15 years of the franchise the Wolves weren’t alone in their view of how the league worked.

But within the past five years the AHL has changed greatly. The league has effectively become a place for NHL teams to write off development, NHL teams have been buying up priorly independent AHL franchises and the league has moved to a more of a practice-heavy schedule.

The league has also gone to a playoff format where regular season success doesn’t matter, which has effectively devalued the games themselves for teams and coaches.

I’ve written a lot about this, including most recently on Michael Brandsegg-Nygård’s decision to pick the SHL over the AHL, which you can read here:

It's not just about the size of the ice

Levin is effectively fighting an uphill battle for his vision of the AHL. He wanted the league to be disrupter, it’s why he’s battled with the Blackhawks before, and it’s simply become an NHL portfolio.

His view of Tulsky having never played an NHL game is also short-sighted, and ignores the fact that all 32 NHL teams have now heavily invested in analytics departments and use them to find market inefficiencies.

I’ve spoken at length with Tulsky before about this, which you can read about more here:

Turns out Eric Tulsky didn't need to go back to chemistry

Levin’s beef also isn’t with Tulsky, it’s with Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon.

Dundon has owned the Hurricanes now in some capacity since 2017, eventually buying out all of Peter Karmanos Jr.’s shares in 2021.

Dundon runs the Hurricanes more like a business than a hobby, which is common for many NHL owners. He’s a proponent of full-blown NASCAR-style jerseys, he’s told me the NHL should grow the playoff field to instantly grow revenue, and he’s a big believer in finding the best deal for off-ice jobs.

The Hurricanes spend on players, they spend on things that impact the day-to-day of the athletes, but if it doesn’t impact an NHL player’s day-to-day he’s effectively looking for a deal. It’s why the Hurricanes have had public spats with fan-favorite broadcaster John Forslund, and have been known to combine other internal jobs and salaries.

When Dundon bought the team the Hurricanes had a pretty friendly relationship with their prior AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, who are actually based in Carolina, and that devolved as the Checkers independent ownership eventually found a better fit with the Florida Panthers.

Essentially we have two proud businessmen, one in Chicago and one in Raleigh, who have their views of the world and they will likely never see eye-to-eye on the role of the AHL.

For Dundon, the Hurricanes’ AHL affiliate, whoever it is, should be about playing prospects, winning is secondary. For Levin, he believes AHL teams should win first, and use that as an avenue to promote development.

Levin and Dundon will never agree on this, and with how the hockey world is going, Dundon is going to win out eventually. Levin’s franchise, in the long run, can’t exist without NHL-contracted players. Dundon knows this, and at some point I’ve heard he’d like to buy his own NHL franchise to simply run it the way he wants to.

For the Wolves and Hurricanes this season, and for the foreseeable future, it’s gonna be messy. While there are other independent teams, those relationships — the Grand Rapids Griffins and Detroit Red Wings for example — are pretty strong, and it seems unlikely that either side would look for split.

So the Wolves and Hurricanes are effectively caught in a long-term staring match between rich men, who both have the long-term backing of their respective leagues.

While the AHL wasn’t happy with Levin and how the Wolves handled things last season as an independent, the Wolves are one of the hallmark franchises for the league and supported by AHL management — no one from the AHL is ever going to force Levin to sell.

Dundon has his battles, but the NHL loves having him in the ownership portfolio of the league, and no one is going to come in and tell him how to run his franchise.

So how does this spat end and can it even end?

The Wolves can take shots, they can be publicly disgruntled, but in the end as long as Levin wants to own an AHL team and as long as Dundon owns the the AHL-NHL agreement will continue to feel like it’s teetering on the edge of a divorce that won’t happen.