The Rockford IceHogs finished the 2024-25 regular season with a modest 31-33-6-2 record, which was good enough for fifth in the Central Division and a place in the Calder Cup Playoffs. This marked the fourth year in a row the IceHogs made a post-season appearance, having to play in the first-round three of those four seasons.
The team got matched with Chicago Wolves in a best-of-three round to kick off the Calder Cup Playoffs, a team that had major issues all season but whom the IceHogs had just a 3-7-1 regular-season record against. The two teams were somewhat opposites too: the IceHogs had a veteran heavy top-six with most of the prospect power being on defense and in net while the Wolves were led by three high profile young rookies and vets littered the defense and goal. In Game 1, the match was close both on the ice and on the scoreboard. The Wolves opened the scoring midway through the second period, but an odd Kevin Korchinski goal late in the second evened the contest at 1-1 and Aryom Levshunov scored with nine minutes remaining in overtime to lift the IceHogs 2-1 for the win. In Game 2, the IceHogs dumped five-goals into the Wolves’ net and Drew Commesso was huge in net, stopping all 34 shots he faced and backstopping Rockford to a 5-0 victory.
SWEEP SWEEP VICTORY 🧹#GoHogs #CalderCup pic.twitter.com/gGiODBswcx
— Rockford IceHogs (@goicehogs) April 26, 2025
The IceHogs next faced the top seed in the division, the Milwaukee Admirals, in a best-of-five Central Division Semifinals series. It was going to be a tough outing for Rockford: the IceHogs went just 1-7-0-2 in the regular season series against the Admirals, including losing all five games in Milwaukee. Surprisingly, the IceHogs won the first two games of the season: a thrilling come-from-behind 3-2 overtime match in Game 1 in which Colton Dach scored the game winning goal and 6-1 routing led by Joey Anderson hat trick in Game 2.
Unfortunately, despite a 2-0 led in the five-game series, a team as good as the Admirals wasn’t likely to quietly, and they surged back to complete a reverse sweep of the IceHogs, winning the final three games in the series. Game 3 was a lopsided 6-2 affairs, but the last two games were on-goal games, including an almost comeback overtime 4-3 loss in the final game to close out the post-season. The ending may have been disappointing, but the overall experience was good for a young team.
Note: For this report, any player under 25 at the start of the season and with an NHL contract will be considered a Blackhawks prospect. Additionally, we’re going to limit this to players who played at least 10 games with the IceHogs since the last update (so no Colton Dach) and were assigned to Rockford for the playoffs (so no Landon Slaggert) — we have other analysis coming for young players in the NHL.
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