The Calgary Wranglers have signed five players — including Darryl Sutter’s son, Brett — to one-year American Hockey League contracts, the club announced Wednesday.
Brett Sutter, 35, spent the last five seasons as captain of the AHL’s Ontario Reign and played his 1,000th professional game during the 2021–22 campaign.
The Calgary Flames originally selected Sutter in the sixth round (No. 179 overall) of the 2005 NHL Draft. He played 15 NHL games with the Flames over parts of three seasons before being traded to the Carolina Hurricanes in 2010.
The younger Sutter’s departure from the Flames organization came shortly after he was involved in an incident outside a bar in Arizona. Darryl Sutter, the Flames’ general manager at the time, ended up trading his own son to Carolina alongside Ian White in a deal for Tom Kostopoulos and Anton Babchuk.
Brett Sutter spent time with the Hurricanes and Minnesota Wild organizations before joining the Los Angeles Kings in 2016. While he never played any NHL games for the club, Sutter spent parts of seven seasons with the Ontario Reign and very quickly emerged as a leader on the team. (Last season, we broke down a series of events in the AHL that involved Sutter and Stockton Heat defenceman Juuso Valimaki, among others — read more about it here).
In 60 career NHL regular-season games, Sutter has scored two goals and 10 points. He’s added 176 goals and 424 points in 974 career AHL contests and will likely surpass the 1,000 mark in that league this season.
The Wranglers also signed goaltender Daniil Chechelev, defencemen Simon Lavigne and Rhett Rhinehart, and forward Mitch McLain to AHL contracts. FlamesNation previously reported the McLain signing last week — you can read about it here.
The Flames selected Chechelev — a 6’3″, 190-pound goaltender from Khabarovsk, Russia — in the fourth round of the 2020 NHL Draft. Chechelev spent most of the 2021–22 season with the ECHL’s Kansas City Mavericks, posting a 12–12–5 record and an .894 save percentage in 30 games.
Both Lavigne and Rhinehart participated in the Flames’ 2022 prospect development camp and will likely split their time between the Wranglers and the ECHL in 2022–23. Lavigne, 21, is a 6’3″ left-handed defenceman; Rhinehart, 20, is 6’4″ and shoots right.
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