Allen vs Jacksonville Game Preview Including Zawyer Factor, Playoff Race, Allen's Magic Number, Jersey Record, NHL/AHL Contracted Players and More

 

It is game day for the Allen Americans as the Jacksonville Icemen are in town for three games in the next three nights. The ECHL schedule is full head scratchers and this is yet another one. Allen plays three games in three days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) and then the Americans have eight days off before playing Utah at home on Sunday afternoon. Go figure!

 

- This series against the Jacksonville Icemen or should I say Zawyer Icemen has many plot twists. Jacksonville was the first ECHL purchase by Zawyer back in July of 2019. They have expanded greatly since that time, but the Jacksonville Icemen has been the shining star as the original purchase and is locally owned since Zawyer is headquartered in Jacksonville. Allen Americans owner, Myles Jack, first got involved in hockey as a minority owner of the Icemen when he was playing for the NFL Jacksonville Jaguars. 

The Jacksonville ECHL franchise has been wildly successful from a business perspective growing from an average attendance of 5993 when Zawyer bought the team to a league leading average of 9358 this season. Jacksonville's attendance would rank it #4 of 32 teams in AHL attendance. 

As has been well documented things didn't go well between Zawyer and Allen. Zawyer was a minority owner in Allen, but was hired by majority owner Myles Jack as a consultant. That relationship ended on January 31 after a contentious divorce. 

That is a long winded way to say this series is a lot more important than South Division Jacksonville visiting Mountain Division Allen. There is no doubt both Zawyer and Myles Jack want to win this series.

 

-  Obviously the Allen locker room is not focused on the ownership/Zawyer divorce. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see Myles Jack make a trip to the locker room to address the team as he has done several times in this season.

 

- The on ice challenge in this series for Allen will be a formidable one. The Americans come into the series with a win in their last game, but are 1-7-1-1 in the last 10 games. Jacksonville arrives in Allen with with a 10 game point streak (7-0-3-0), the second longest current point streak in the ECHL (Rapid City #1 with 13). If you look at a longer time frame, in the last two months (24 games) Allen's record is 5-14-3-2 (.313) and Jacksonville's record in 16-5-3-0 (.729).  

- Jacksonville is solidly in third place in the South Division. The Icemen have a six point advantage (74 vs 68) over fourth place Orlando with three games in hand. The Icemen trail second place South Carolina by five points and first place Florida by seven points. The South Division is the toughest in the league. South Carolina and Florida both have better records then Mountain Division leader, Kansas City.  

 

- Here is how Allen and Jacksonville rank in some key stats this season:

• Ave. goals scored: Allen #26 (2.49) - Jacksonville #12 (3.23)
• Ave. goals allowed: Allen #28 (4.07) - Jacksonville #5 (2.64)
• Ave. shots for: Allen #19 (28.98) - Jacksonville #15 (30.63)
• Ave shots allowed: Allen #29 (38.16) - Jacksonville #17 (31.14) 
  
• Power play percentage: Allen #20 (18.1%) - Jacksonville #14 (19.6%)
• Penalty kill percentage: Allen #16 (79.9%) - Jacksonville #8 (83.1%) 

It is no surprise given where Allen and Jacksonville are in the standings that Allen is ranked lower in every stat above. The most glaring difference is in goals allowed. Allen gives up almost a goal and a half (1.43) per game more than Jacksonville. To be fair the Americans are much improved in goals allowed recently. In the last six games the average is 3.33 and in the just completed three game series in Tahoe the average was just 2.00. 

 

- Sometimes home vs road special teams percentages are very similar. Not the case with Jacksonville's power play. I can't remember ever seeing such a wide discrepancy. The Icemen's home power play is ranked #27 (13.0%), but their road power play is ranked #2 at (26.4%). Allen on the other hand has the exact same power play percentage at home and on the road (18.1%). 

- Allen snapped its losing streak in Tahoe on Sunday by scoring the first goal and never surrendering the lead. Allen still has a losing record when scoring first, 8-9-5-2 (.479). That is better than giving up the first goal to Jacksonville, who is #5 in the league when scoring first, 22-3-4-1 (.817).

 

- Jacksonville is another one of those teams Allen does not want to play catch up with. Allen's record when trailing after the first period is 2-23-2-0 and when trailing after the second period is 2-28-2-1. You combine that with Jacksonville's record of 17-2-3-1 when leading after the first period and 24-0-3-1 when leading after the second period and you can see why Allen can't be playing from behind.

 

- Here are some other keys to success in this series:

• Get pucks behind the Icemen's defense and avoid neutral zone turnovers.
• Win the special teams battle.
• More scoring from the forwards.
• Continued good goalie play.

 

- Here is coach Ferguson's scouting report on Jacksonville:

"They are a well balanced team with scoring throughout the lineup, especially with a couple of point per game AHL guys."

"They like to control the middle of the ice defensively, with their big defensemen."

"The challenge for us will be to get to the net and find some rebounds."

"They have a good, quick goalie on the smaller side, so we need to take away his eyes and create traffic in front of him."

"We need to stay out of the penalty box. We can't give their skill guys too many looks on the power play." 

 

- It will be a two referee game tonight. Trevor Wohlford (#38) and Hayden Verbeek (#57) will work the game. Yes, Verbeek is from the famous hockey family. His uncle is Pat Verbeek who played in over 1400 NHL games. Hayden had a good pro career himself. He played in 90 AHL games and 31 ECHL games (Maine, Adirondack, Toledo).   

 

- Here is the series preview issued by the Allen Americans: https://allenamericans.com/news/2025/03/game-day-preview-americans-welcome-jacksonville-to-allen-for-the-first-of-three 

 

OTHER COMMENTS

- Some interesting results in the Mountain Division last night. Wichita was on the road playing Toledo and was outshot 43-17 but earned a valuable point with a 2-1 overtime loss. Meanwhile Idaho, who has been toiling in fifth place for a long time, went on the road and beat Kansas City 5-0, scoring all five goals in the first two periods. Many have been predicting Idaho would make a run into a playoff position. Could this be the start of that move? Here are the standings for the four teams battling for three playoff spots:

• 70 points - Tulsa
• 68 points - Tahoe
• 67 points - Wichita
• 65 points - Idaho

 

- There are just two games on the ECHL schedule tonight. Jacksonville at Allen is interesting from the ownership dynamic. The other game is Rapid City at Tahoe. Rapid City is hanging on to playoff hopes by a thread, with 55 points. They must sweep Tahoe who they play three times to have a chance. Tahoe is in a battle to make the playoffs and will be very motivated. The Knight Monsters play great at home with a .712 point percentage. Rapid City is .444 on the road. 

 

- Allen's maximum points if it wins all 17 remaining games is 72 points. Once teams ahead of them in the standings reach 73 points, even if Allen wins, the Americans will be mathematically eliminated. The Americans are already eliminated from first place and could easily become the first ECHL team to be eliminated from the playoffs by the end of the weekend if they get swept. 

 

- Allen's playoff hopes are long gone. The Americans only hope is to avoid having the worst record in the Mountain Division, which will be a challenge. Last place will belong to either Allen or Utah. Both have difficult remaining schedules. Last place will likely be decided by how they play against each other. Allen will play Utah four more times, once at home and three times on the road.  

 

-  Allen will wear its red jersey tonight, black jersey tomorrow night and Texas jersey on Saturday. There will be a live auction of the Texas jerseys after the Saturday game. It is a small sample size and Allen's home record is horrible, but here are the point percentages by jersey:

• .333 - Texas jersey
• .250 - Black jersey
• .222 - Red jersey 
• .200 - Grey jersey
• .200 - Specialty jersey 

With 10 home games remaining the point percentages will change, but thus far the numbers are the same as last season. The Texas jersey has the best record and the specialty jerseys have the worst record.

 

DID YOU KNOW: NHL/AHL contracted skaters on each ECHL team. Excludes goalies and players on 14 day IR. Overall numbers are dwindling:

 

10: SC

8: REA

7: CIN, GVL, *KC, ORL, SAV

5: JAX

4: ADK, *FLA, IND, TAH, TUL, UTA, WHL, WIC

3: ATL, BLM, KAL, RC, WOR

2: ALN, FW, IDH, NOR, *TR

1: IA, MNE, *TOL

 

*Division leaders - You can see you don’t need a roster full of NHL/AHL contracted players to be successful. The numbers above do not include goalies and what the four division leaders do have in common is two good NHL/AHL contracted goalies.