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Highlighting Devin Cooley’s, Rory Kerins’ and Brett Sutter’s time at the AHL All-Star Classic
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Photo credit: Angela Burger/Calgary Wranglers
Paige Siewert
Feb 4, 2025, 12:00 ESTUpdated: Feb 4, 2025, 02:08 EST
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The Calgary Wranglers had two players and a coach hop on a flight to Coachella Valley after their weekend series against Abbotsford to attend the AHL All-Star Classic. Devin Cooley and Rory Kerins went down to represent things on the player side and Brett Sutter went as the head coaching representative for the Pacific Division.

Skills competition highlights (Sunday)

The festivities started with a skills competition on Sunday night where the players each got to participate in three events each. Rory Kerins started things off with the control relay. He was in the first heat for the Western Conference. 
His performance in this relay led the West to the win in this heat. The Western Conference also ended up winning this competition altogether three points to one. 
Devin Cooley was up next for the Rapid Fire challenge. His turn was in the fourth round when he faced 10 shots from Ethan Bear of the Hershey Bears and Simon Nemec of the Utica Comets. He stopped six of the total shots and stacked the pads on the last save. The Eastern Conference ended up winning this competition overall. 
Cooley was also the next Wrangler in action in the Pass and Score challenge. This was essentially a three-on-one against Dalibor Dvorsky of the Springfield Thunderbirds, Alex Steeves of the Toronto Marlies and Jeremy Davies of the Belleville Senators. Cooley didn’t have any luck stopping their three shot attempts in this challenge. 
Kerins was in this challenge as well in the final round against Dennis Hildeby of the Toronto Marlies. His two linemates for this event were Ty Mueller of the Abbotsford Canucks and Justin Hryckowian of the Texas Stars. This group had one goal in three attempts and a memorable double screen move to finish it off. 
Both Calgary players were involved in the breakaway relay as well. Cooley was between the pipes for the third round for the Western Conference facing Olle Lycksell of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, Isak Rosen of the Rochester Americans, Dalibor Dvorsky of the Springfield Thunderbirds, Logan Shaw of the Toronto Marlies and Simon Nemec of the Utica Comets. Cooley stopped two of the five shooters in this competition. 
In Kerins’ heat, he went first in his round and scored on Dylan Garand of the Hartford Wolf Pack. Kerins was only one of two shooters that scored in his round. 
This wrapped up the Skills Competition portion of this event and the Eastern Conference ended up winning on opening night. They won 19-13 but still had a day to go for the ultimate bragging rights. 

Performances in the 3-on-3 tournament (Monday)

The format of this three-on-three mini tournament was a round robin, with every team facing each other and the teams with the best records moving on to the finals. Games went for 10 minutes with most of the netminders splitting each game five minutes each.
The event started with the North Division and the Pacific Division facing off in the first game. Cooley gave up the first goal about halfway through the first five minute period but his team got two back their way by the end of the frame. In the second five minute period, Rory Kerins scored the only goal that went on to be the game-winner.
The Pacific Division took a 3-2 win over the North to start. Their next game was the fourth one on the docket against the North Division. Rory Kerins was kept off the scoreboard in this game and did not register any shots. Cooley gave up two goals on eight shots. Each team scored one in the first period and three in the second. It had to be decided in a shootout, that the Pacific fell in. Kerins didn’t get a shot during the shootout.
The third and final game for the Pacific was against the Central Division and ended up being the deciding game for who would continue on to the finals. Rory Kerins led off the scoring in this game and scored just 49 seconds in. 
The Pacific Division quickly got up 2-0 but gave up the next five goals and fell 5-2. This ended their night in the competition. In this game, Cooley gave up three goals in eight shots. Kerins finished with two goals and five shots through these three modified games. Cooley ended up stopping 16 out of the 22 shots he faced, but his statistics in this competition placed him at the bottom of the goaltending stats.

Results

Unfortunately, the guys from Calgary were not part of the winning side on either night but from their body language and the looks on their faces, they had a great time at this event. The Central Division ended up winning the three-on-three All-Star Challenge with a 2-1 shootout win over the Atlantic Division. The MVP of this event was given to Kevin Korchinski of the Rockford Ice Hogs, the AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks for his goal, three assists, and shootout goal.
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