A teddy bear toss timelapse with the Coachella Valley Firebirds
See a timelapse of the Coachella Valley Firebirds’ teddy bear toss at Acrisure Arena
This is how the other half lives, as the saying goes.
For two years, Coachella Valley Firebirds fans watched lines packed with veterans filling up the goal. This year they watched lines full of young 20-somethings struggling to score.
For two years, it was a team that mostly avoided injury, or was deep enough to win even without a key player. This year’s team got stung by the injury bug multiple times, including key players at the worst possible time.
For two years, every time the Firebirds took the ice, the feeling in Acrisure Arena oozed “I know we’re going to win, no matter what.” This year it was “I think we can win, if things go well.”
That’s why a season ending on May 9 instead of June 21 or June 24 like the first two years has left the Firebirds flock a little shell-shocked.
It’s a reality check. And even if it was one your brain and your eyes could see coming for months, it doesn’t make it any less hard to take.
“Sobering” is a good word to describe it. This is what it’s supposed to be like rooting for an American Hockey League team, not what we enjoyed the first two years. Back-to-back Calder Cup Finals trips? That was the outlier. That was not normal, even though it was our normal.
And now we know how lucky we had it. Remember that “silver spoon” other teams labeled us with last season, leading to Andrew Poturalski having fun with it by bringing a big silver spoon to a press conference? Now we understand our good fortune more clearly.
I go back to a statistic I unearthed after last season. Of the 32 current AHL teams, only 10 have ever made it to two Calder Cup finals. The Firebirds are one of those 10, and they did it in two years. We caught lightning in a bottle, it was fun and it was electric, but it wasn’t normal.
This year was our first “real” AHL season. AHL teams are mostly made up of young players drafted by the organization, with a handful of veterans mixed in. Not the other way around.
The 2024-25 Firebirds played hard. I can tell you from talking to the players and coaches after and between games, they wanted to win, they had the desire to win. Look no further than their impressive penalty kill, one of the best in the league, with guys sacrificing their bodies every night in front of a talented but young goalie in Nikke Kokko.
The “want to” was there, they just couldn’t overwhelm the opposing team…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at TheAHL.com | The American Hockey League…