Manitoba Moose in Good Position to Be Competitive in 2025-26

The Manitoba Moose are hoping for a complete turnaround in 2025-26, and seem in good position to execute one.

Moose Looking to Put Disastrous 2024-25 in the Rearview

The American Hockey League (AHL) team’s 25th-anniversary 2024-25 was a disaster from start to end. They finished with a 25-41-3-3 record, with the 25 wins representing 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 — excluding the 2019-20 season, which wasn’t completed due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — and also finished dead last in their conference for the first time ever.

Quite simply, they couldn’t score and couldn’t defend. They tallied 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, while their penalty kill finished 21st with an 81 per cent efficiency. They blew countless multi-goal leads in matters of minutes, were shut out seven times, won multiple games in a row only four times, and more than two in a row only once.

Proven AHL Veterans, Promising Youth Should Boost Moose in 2025-26

Head coach Mark Morrison, who avoided the axe and will return behind the bench for his fifth season, pointed to bad luck with injuries, his club’s youthfulness, and underperformance from veterans as reasons for their terrible season. His team was not without its high draft picks and those with hundreds of games of AHL experience under their belts last season, but he will have even more from both categories this season.

The Veterans

While the Moose lost Dylan Coghlan, Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, Simon Lundmark, CJ Suess, and Dominic Toninato, they have a lot of returning veterans (by AHL standards, anyone in their mid-20s and older). Jaret Anderson-Dolan, Kevin Conley, Tyson Empey, and 2024-25 points leader Mason Shaw are back in the fold up front, while Tyrel Bauer, Ville Heinola, Isaak Phillips, and Ashton Sautner return on the blue line.

Adam Lowry (hip surgery recovery), Cole Perfetti (high-ankle sprain), and potentially Jonathan Toews (undisclosed injury) being out for the Winnipeg Jets to start the season led to Nikita Chibrikov, Parker Ford, and Brad Lambert — three of the Moose’s best offensive players over the past two seasons — all cracking the big club’s opening-night roster. One or more more of them will likely be sent down when the aforementioned return, further deepening the Moose after the first month or so.

Summer free-agent signings Kale Clague, Walker Duehr, Phil Di Giuseppe, and Samuel Fagemo all have proven track records of AHL success. Clague just set a personal high with 39 points in 69 games from the blue line, Duehr has posted roughly half a point per game in his AHL career, Di Giuseppe has more than 200 points in 300-plus games and just won the Calder Cup, and Fagemo has scored seemingly at will at the level with 132 goals in 268-career AHL games.

The Youth

There’s also set to be an influx of highly-touted young talent. Colby Barlow, Jacob Julien, and Brayden Yager are among the organization’s top prosects and just three forwards with bigtime upside who will be looking to impress in their first seasons of professional hockey. They will face a learning curve and struggle at times, but one should also expect them to turn heads at others.

Related: Jets Top 10 Prospects For 2025-26

They’ll join still-young returnees looking to take another step — sophomores Fabian Wagner and Elias Salomonsson and third-year forward Danny Zhilkin — now that they’ve cut their teeth in the league.

The Goaltenders

In net, Domenic DiVincentiis will look to build off a pretty nice rookie season where he took the Moose starting role in the back half, while Thomas Milic will look to bounce back from a very rough sophomore campaign where he bounced between the Moose and the ECHL’s Norfolk Admirals.

The young tandem is joined by free-agent signee and Winnipegger Isaac Poulter, who has 77-career games of AHL experience and a 40-24-10 career record to go along with five shutouts.

On Paper, Moose Look Like Formidable Club

Some of the aforementioned players will spend time with the Jets this season, to be sure. However, on paper, the 2025-26 Moose look like a team that should be able to not only make the Calder Cup Playoffs, but finish near the top of the Central Division and win their first playoff round since 2017-18.

If the Moose struggle again, it will be on Morrison and Morrison alone. There’s a lot an AHL coach cannot control such as NHL call ups and even player deployment at times, but good leaders find a way to get the best out of the personnel they have at their disposal. The organization hired experienced AHL bench boss Bob Nardella as Morrison’s assistant, so if the Moose struggle again out of the gate, the organization should not hesitate to make a coaching change.

The Moose begin the 72-game AHL season on Oct. 10 when they host the Laval Rocket at Canada Life Centre.