The Manitoba Moose’s 25th-anniversary season was one to forget, and there should be a coaching change as a result.
The Moose finished with a 25-41-3-3 record under Mark Morrison; the 25 wins represent an all-time franchise low. They finished dead last in their division for the first time since their 1997-98 season, when they were still an International Hockey League team (we’re excluding the 2019-20 season, which wasn’t completed due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.) They also finished dead last in their conference for the first time ever.
They scored a league-low 169 goals (an average of just 2.34 per game) and allowed the fifth-most goals at 248 for a minus-79 differential. Their power play finished 28th with a 15.9 per cent efficiency. Their penalty kill finished 21st with an 81 per cent efficiency. They blew countless multi-goal leads in matters of minutes. They were shut out seven times. They won multiple games in a row only four times, and more than two in a row only once.
Morrison Hasn’t Had Much Success as Moose Bench Boss
The Moose have gotten worse every season since Morrison was hired as head coach ahead of the 2021-22 campaign after he spent four years as an Anaheim Ducks assistant.
His return to the True North organization (he was a St. John’s IceCaps and Moose assistant coach from 2011 to 2017) and first American Hockey League head-coaching foray started off well enough, as they went 41-24-5-2 in 2021-22. In 2022-23, their win total dropped to 37, and in 2023-24, dropped further to 34. They suffered through a franchise-long 11-game losing streak in 2023-24 in December and January, but still managed to squeak into the Calder Cup playoffs due to the AHL’s friendly playoff format that allows five Central Division teams in.
In all three of those seasons, they lost in the first round they played. In 2023-24, they were swept in two games.
Last season, their win total dropped by another nine, they nearly matched their franchise-long losing streak by dropping eight in a row in December (and 12 of 13 from December to early January). They failed to make the postseason for the first time since 2018-19, where they had 39 wins. While they were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention in early April, in reality, they were never really within striking distance of a playoff position past November.
To be fair, AHL coaches have tough jobs. They often don’t have lineup consistency due to NHL callups, and sometimes they have orders — or at least strong suggestions — from on high to play a certain player in X, Y, and Z situations. A lot of players are learning on the job and many are still teenagers not used to the rigours of being a professional athlete. However, last season especially, Morrison looked incapable of overcoming these known realities of the job, either couldn’t motivate his team to play with any sort of consistency or structure (or didn’t know how), and didn’t surround himself with assistants who could help him get the team to do anything resembling thriving.
With two sub-.500 seasons in a row, some of the franchise’s most-dubious records to his name, and zero playoff-series victories in four campaigns, it’s time for Morrison to be replaced, and arguably assistants Morgan Klimchuk and Drew MacIntyre as well. Assistant coach Eric Dubois has departed to join the DEL’s ERC Ingolstadt as an assistant coach.
Prospect Development and Winning: Not an Either/Or Proposition
One can argue that it doesn’t really matter if an AHL team wins, as long as prospects are playing key roles and developing. However, playing in poor system where all one does is lose — and often in embarrassing fashion — is not the ideal garden for those hoped to eventually be impact NHLers to grow. Winning breeds confidence, while losing a lot breeds doubt, discontent, and disillusionment. It’s hard to see another Kyle Connor, Connor Hellebuyck, Adam Lowry, or Mark Scheifele — all players who spent time in the AHL honing their craft — coming out of this type of atmosphere. The Jets have a number of important prospects who will be joining the Moose out of juniors for 2025-26 — Colby Barlow, Jacob Julien, and Brayden Yager among them — who deserve a better atmosphere for their rookie professional seasons.
Developing prospects and competing for the Calder Cup is not an either/or proposition for an AHL team. Some manage to stay competitive season-in, season-out regardless of their parent club’s priorities. Furthermore, the argument that the main reason the Moose are bad because the Winnipeg Jets are great and sacrificed draft capital for win-now assets is specious. NHL teams and their AHL affiliates can be competitive at the same time.
Four top-10 NHL teams — the Washington Capitals, Colorado Avalanche, Los Angeles Kings, and Dallas Stars -— had their AHL teams finish in the top 10 as well: the Hershey Bears (Washington’s affiliate) finished second, the Colorado Eagles third, the Ontario Reign (Los Angeles’ affiliate) ninth, and the Texas Stars 10th. The Jets and the Moose have been good at the same time in the past (for example, the Jets won 52 games in 2017-18 and went to the Western Conference Final while the Moose won 42 games and went to the second round.)
Related: Meet the Jets’ 2025 NHL Entry Draft Class
The average attendance at Canada Life Centre last season reflects the Moose’s struggles under Morrison. It fell to 3,754 from 3,898, the lowest it’s been since they returned from St. John’s ahead of the 2015-16 season. There’s not nearly as many people willing to suffer through bad AHL hockey as there are willing to suffer through bad NHL hockey, and the Moose were especially bad in downtown Winnipeg with an 9-23-2-2 record compared to a 16-18-1-1 mark in opposing rinks.
The Moose should have been more competitive than they were last season season considering they had 10 players suit up who were drafted in the top three rounds and a number of veterans with hundreds of games of AHL experience under their belts. Sure, they had some bad luck with long-term injuries to Nikita Chibrikov, Parker Ford, and Chaz Lucius (who chose to retire due to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome,) but every team has injury adversity. The inability to overcome it falls on coaching.
