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Sam Honzek plays his first AHL game in 18 months on Saturday night

Photo credit: Terence Leung/Calgary Wranglers

By Ryan Pike

Nov 14, 2026, 11:00 ESTUpdated: Nov 13, 2026, 22:36 EST

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On Apr. 26, 2025, 2023 first-round pick Sam Honzek played an American Hockey League playoff game for the Calgary Wranglers.

Here’s how lines looked for the Wranglers in a season-ending loss to the Coachella Valley Firebirds:

Dryden Hunt – Rory Kerins – Martin Frk
William Stromgren – Sam Morton – Adam Klapka
Sam Honzek – Clark Bishop – Ty Tullio
Alex Gallant – David Silye – Lucas Ciona

Jonathan Aspirot – Ilya Solovyov
Artem Grushnikov – Jeremie Poirier
Yan Kuznetsov – Simon Mack

Waltteri Ignatjew
Connor Murphy

(Hunter Brzustewicz missed the game due to injury.)

On Saturday, for the first time in 18 months, Honzek will pull on a Wranglers sweater as his club faces the Henderson Silver Knights. Joining him will be five familiar faces from his last game with the club – Hunt, Kerins, Morton, Gallant and Brzustewicz.

Since the last time we saw Honzek with the Wranglers, he made the Calgary Flames’ roster out of training camp – twice – and found a role as a two-way forward and penalty-killer at the NHL level alongside captain Mikael Backlund. But he was also injured, twice, and he hasn’t played a game since suffering a lower body injury against the Colorado Avalanche back on Oct. 8. He joined the Flames for morning skate on Wednesday, before being activated from the injury reserve and sent to the Wranglers later that day.

So, for now, Honzek has returned to his old stomping grounds, most likely with a goal of making his stint in the AHL a short but productive one.

Speaking with QR Calgary’s Pat Steinberg on Flames Now on Friday afternoon, here’s how Wranglers head coach Brett Sutter framed the plans for Honzek in the AHL.

Like everyone that’s came down, Sam’s had a really good attitude. I told him he had curfew yesterday since he got sent down on his birthday in Las Vegas. No, he’s came down, he had a great first practice. We’re hoping to get him into the game tomorrow now that’s he’s kind of got in with the group a little bit here and it’s a non-travel day for him.
So, we’re going to play him big minutes. Obviously, he’s a guy that can play top six, top nine at this level. He plays with a ton of pace and a straight-line game, which kind of fits the type of game that we’re trying to play here. He’s obviously going to take a big role on the penalty kill, much like he does with the big club. And I think he’s a guy that can play and produce on a little bit of a second power play unit here for us as well.
He’s going to get minutes. He seems like he has the right attitude here. He wants to come down and work, and find some areas of his game to improve on, and hopefully go right back up and be in a good place for that.

During the 2024-25 season, Honzek had 21 points in 52 AHL games with the Wranglers. We’re curious to see how he’ll look this time around.

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