Practice Update, Roster Update, All Star Game Captains, Skills Competition, Historical Winning Percentage, New Website Covering the Americans and More

The best thing about the Allen Americans practice yesterday was seeing Spencer Asuchak, Josh Brittain and Cole Fraser on the ice. All three are in different stages of recovering from illness and injury. Brittain was a full participant, Fraser was also a full participant but was wearing the yellow no contact jersey and Asuchak skated for part of the practice as a step in his recovery. Fraser and Brittain will go on the trip to Kansas City, Asuchak will not.


- It was a hard practice yesterday with a lot of drills dealing with shortfalls in recent games, turnovers, backchecking and defensive effort. Practice sessions have been few and far between since the beginning of December. This week is the first week with three days between games since the end of November other than the Christmas break. When you consider the Americans played 23 games in 44 days and traveled to Idaho twice, New York, Ontario, Massachusetts, Tulsa and Wichita twice you can see why there has been little time to practice.


- Allen will practice again today before they get on the bus early this afternoon for the 475 mile, eight hour trip to Kansas City. It seems crazy to travel that far for one game and turnaround and come home but thus is the schedule in the ECHL. Allen will play the Mavericks at home on Monday afternoon. The Americans go to Kansas City five times this season and all five are stand alone games.


- If you read the blog or followed AHL or ECHL transactions the last couple of days you probably saw Les Lancaster being loaned to San Diego and then San Antonio. I had several questions about what happened and the answer is simple. This was merely a paperwork snafu. Les was always headed to San Antonio.


- This is the time of year where teams wear down and become depleted so you never know who might be headed to the AHL next. Allen has already lent more free agents to the AHL than any other team. Young free agent players like Turner Ottenbreit, Les Lancaster, Gabe Gagne, Brett Pollock and Jordan Topping are all having good seasons so they could get or continue to get AHL teams asking for them. It is also possible Allen could get players like Matt Register and Jake Doty back and it is likely Iowa will assign additional contracted players to the Americans. It is the typical ECHL roster juggling coach Martinson deals with this time of the season when you have not enough players one week and too many the next. Stay tuned. 


- Allen has only eight games in the next 21 days so you can expect the Americans to lose their top spot as the ECHL points leader as South Carolina and Newfoundland make up the games in hand they have over Allen. Newfoundland has three games in hand, South Carolina five.


- Yesterday the ECHL issued a press release naming the All-Star game captains and participants in the skills contest: Here is that press release: https://www.echl.com/en/news/2020/1/captains-and-skills-competition-rosters-announced-for-2020-warrior-echl-all-star-classic-presented-by-toyota


- There is a new website, Lonestar Puck Report, that is covering Texas hockey that has been doing a lot of interviews with the Allen Americans. In talking to the owner of the website, he primarily uses video interviews with players and coaches. He has done interviews after each home game with a player and just did a longer piece with Steve Martinson. It is always nice to get more publicity for the Americans. Here is were you can find the LoneStar Puck Report: https://lonestarpuckreport.com/


- While Allen is idle tonight there are 20 ECHL teams in action. Here is a preview of the 10 games on tap tonight. https://www.echl.com/en/news/2020/1/echl-today-jan-17



DID YOU KNOW: Allen's winning percentage after 42 games is .726. How does that compare to the Americans winning percentage in past seasons.

.726   2019-20  (after 42 games)
.389   2018-19
.542   2017-18
.722   2016-17
.618   2015-16*
.736   2014-15*

*won Kelly Cup championship