Calgary Wranglers head coach Mitch Love has won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the American Hockey League’s most outstanding coach in the 2022–23 regular season.

Love, 38, guided the Wranglers to a 51–17–4 record and 106 points in 72 games en route to their first Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy as league champions. By merit of finishing first in the Pacific Division (and the league), the Wranglers earned a bye through the first round of the 2023 Calder Cup Playoffs.

The Calgary Flames named Love the head coach of their AHL affiliate prior to the 2021–22 season. He guided the Stockton Heat to the Pacific Division title and the AHL Western Conference Final in his first year behind the bench.

Love previously won the Pieri Memorial Award after last season, as well. This is his second consecutive year being named the AHL’s most outstanding coach.

Love joined the Flames organization after a successful coaching career in the Western Hockey League. He served from 2012 to 2018 as an assistant coach with the Everett Silvertips, with whom he also played as a defenceman from 2003 to 2005 before having his No. 2 retired by the team.

In 2018, the Saskatoon Blades hired Love to be their head coach. He led the Blades to a 95–44–16 record in his three seasons with the team and was twice named an assistant coach for Team Canada’s World Junior team during his tenure.

The Stockton Heat only qualified for the playoffs once in their six-year history before Love arrived in 2021. In his first season with the Flames’ AHL affiliate — coincidentally its last year before relocating to Calgary — the Heat finished with a 45–16–7 record and dispatched the Bakersfield Condors and Colorado Eagles in the playoffs before falling to the eventual Calder Cup champion Chicago Wolves in six games.

Love and the Wranglers are set to take on one of the Abbotsford Canucks, Bakersfield Condors, Ontario Reign, and Tucson Roadrunners in the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs. It remains to be seen exactly when they’ll return to action after their bye, but it’ll probably be at some point in the final week of April.

Pacific Division champions, Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy (regular-season champions)

Dustin Wolf: First Team All-Star, Harry “Hap” Holmes Memorial Award (fewest goals allowed)

Mitch Love: Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award (most outstanding coach)

Matthew Phillips: First Team All-Star

Jeremie Poirier: AHL All-Rookie Team