Five seasons of Gladness: After successful campaign, Gwinnett looks to year six

While hockey fans around the nation week were glued to their TV sets as summer began, watching the climax of the Stanley Cup Final, area hockey fans were already thinking about next season after another tough exit in the Kelly Cup playoffs by the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL.

After claiming third place in their division, the Gladiators swept the Charlotte Checkers, three-games-to-none, to advance to the second round for the fifth time in as many years of existence. It was there, though, that they had their run halted by the South Carolina Stingrays, surrendering a three-games-to-two decision.

Gwinnett might have usurped command of the series as early as Game 2, head coach Jeff Pyle figures.

On April 19, already trailing the best-of-five series 1-0 at North Charleston Coliseum, the Gladiators let the hole get a tad deeper via a 5-4 overtime decision, when, Pyle insists, they could just as easily have put the stamp on a shifting victory. And had they mustered that, they could have returned home to Duluth with a chance to pin the next two games and return to the third round of the Kelly Cup playoffs.

Instead, thanks to Stingray defenseman Nate Kiser's nimble blast from the point at 8:06 of the extra frame, Gwinnett was forced to cram in a do-or-die, three-games-in-three-nights scenario. The Gladiators hustled well enough to take Games 3 and 4 on their ice on April 21 and 22, but snuffed out the next night in the rubber game, 2-0, back in South Carolina.

"We turned the puck over," Pyle recalled in reference to the play that authorized Kiser's Game 2 goal. "We still had more chances, but that was the game where we outplayed them. Had we played smarter, we would have taken an opportunity to come back here and close the series out."

In a pinch, the old "could have, would have, should have" case didn't smile upon the Thrashers' neighboring ECHL affiliate. But on the whole, the 2007-08 Gladiators rounded out yet another respectable campaign, posting at least 40 regular season victories and winning at least one playoff round for the fifth time in as many years of existence.

This fifth-year anniversary campaign saw a record of 44-23-0-2 for 93 points and third-place in the nine-member Southern Division. Statistically, it was the Gladiators' second-best run behind the 2005-06 season, when they garnered 50 regular season wins and advanced to the Kelly Cup Final (ultimately losing to the Alaska Aces).

For a team of that much respectable consistency, all of which Pyle has overseen, a title remains the core unchecked item on their checklist. To achieve that, Pyle admits some minor tweaking is still in order, but for the minor leagues -- where players generally come in an out through a perpetual revolving door -- five winning seasons is a pleasurable achievement.

"A lot of it is that we've had a lot of talented guys," Pyle granted. "We've had great affiliations with [the] Atlanta [Thrashers] and Chicago [Wolves, the Thrashers' AHL affiliate] which obviously gives us a chance to get good players. It's been an organization that I think works pretty hard to get the right type of players, get real character guys, hard-working guys. And because of that, we've been successful."

But how can they get to be champagne-and-cigar successful?

"We just gotta be a little more committed," said Pyle. "I think there's 6-8 teams every year that have a good chance to win it, but with injuries, with call-ups -- which happens in this league -- you've gotta' find a way to battle through, and, in the end, instead of looking for excuses of why it can't work, you've gotta make sure you make every play right. If you don't have the most talented team, then you need to be the most disciplined team."

Extensions for some

As a whole, the Atlanta-Chicago-Gwinnett partnership's campaign is not quite over. As of Monday, the Wolves are ahead, 3-2, in the AHL's best-of-seven Calder Cup Finals with the help of three Gwinett graduates and another six players who saw action here over the course of this season.

Not long after the South Carolina series, Chicago recalled the likes of Matt Anderson, Chad Denny, Guillaume Desbiens, Mike Hamilton, Craig Kowalski, Scott Lehman, and Tomas Pospisil to join the team in their playoff workouts. Both Anderson and Hamilton -- who played in every regular season and playoff game for the Gladiators this past year -- saw ice time in the first two games of the championship series.

From his standpoint as the organization's Double-A coach, Pyle said: "It's exciting to watch them -- a guy like Mike Hamilton, Matty Anderson, those guys who finished up here.

"And I told them all year, if they can do the little things well here, it'll carry over when they go up to the American League and that's what'll open the door for them. So I'm pretty proud that those guys are not only playing in the Calder Cup here, but it assures them that what they learned here does help."

Timely Recovery

Pyle acknowledged that his club got a welcome late-season boost from an old friend in Brad Schell. After leading the Gladiators with a franchise record 110 points in 2006-07, his third season with Gwinnett, Schell took off for the Philadelphia Flyers organization.

But a back injury sustained in training camp put Schell aside for four months and his eventual release left him without an employer. When he healed, the Gladiators invited him back, and after posting two goals and an assist in his February 8 return, he went on to record 8 goals and 30 assists in just 29 games.

"I think he would have been in the American League all year had he not been injured," noted Pyle. "He had the opportunity to go anywhere, decided to come back and play for us and he just did a phenomenal job.

"We were fortunate to add a player of that caliber at that time of the year."

With Schell out for most of the ride, Jeff Campbell (91 points) led all Gladiator scorers for the second time in three seasons.

In the meantime, the Gladiators will take the offseason and reset for their sixth season of play in the ECHL. The 2008-09 Gladiators schedule is set to kickoff on Oct. 18 at home in the Gwinnett Arena against Mississippi.