Lake Erie Monsters

The Lake Erie Monsters are a professional ice hockey team in the American Hockey League (AHL) that began play in the 2007–08 AHL season. The Monsters play all of their home games at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, which they share with the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and the Arena Football League's Cleveland Gladiators.

They are the AHL affiliate for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League (NHL).

1 Franchise history
2 Cleveland hockey history
3 Season-by-season results
4 Players
5 Team records
6 Media
7 Mascot and entertainment
8 References
9 External links

Franchise history

The Lake Erie Monsters began in 2006 when the dormant Utah Grizzlies AHL franchise was purchased by a Cleveland ownership group led by Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA team and Quicken Loans on May 16, 2006, after a new AHL team was awarded to Cleveland following the Cleveland Barons moving to Worcester following the 2005–06 season.^[1] With the Quicken Loans Arena established as the team's home venue, the Colorado Avalanche were announced as the franchise's first NHL parent club with a five-year agreement on December 17, 2006.

On January 25, 2007, the franchise was officially announced as the Lake Erie Monsters, referring to Bessie, a creature of local folklore. The name was chosen from researching focus groups around the Cleveland area and the logo incorporated the Geographical connection in the Region with Lake Erie.^[2] The Monsters do not recognize any past links to the Grizzlies and promote themselves as having begun in 2007.

Former NHL player Joe Sacco was named as the Lake Erie Monsters first head coach. The Monsters opened their inaugural 2007–08 campaign at home against the Grand Rapids Griffins on October 6, 2007, with Craig Billington acting as the Monsters General Manager.^[3]

At the end of the 2010–11 season the Monsters made it into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. After gaining a 3-1 game lead over the Manitoba Moose they lost in game 7 4-1 and lost the round four games to three.^[4]

On April 17, 2015, it was announced that the Monsters had signed a multi-year agreement to become the AHL affiliate for the Columbus Blue Jackets, which will take effect in the 2015–16 season. The affiliation was among several that offseason that brought AHL and NHL franchise affiliations geographically closer together.^[5]

Cleveland hockey history

The following teams have previously played in Cleveland. The Monsters recognize and honor past Cleveland teams with commemorative banners at Quicken Loans Arena:^[6]

Cleveland Indians/Falcons/Barons (1929-1936 IHL; 1936-1937 I-AHL; 1937–1973 AHL) - nine-time Calder Cup Champions^[6]
Cleveland Crusaders (1972–1976) WHA
Cleveland Barons (1976–1978) NHL
Cleveland Lumberjacks (1992–2001) IHL
Cleveland Barons (2001–2006) AHL^[7]

Season-by-season results

This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Monsters. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Lake Erie Monsters seasons

Regular Season											Playoffs
Season	Games	Won	Lost	OTL	SOL	Points	PCT	Goals for	Goals against	Standing	Year	1st round	2nd round	3rd round	Finals
2010–11	80	44	28	3	5	96	.600	223	206	2nd, North	2011	L, 4-3 MTB	—	—	—
2011–12	76	37	29	3	7	84	.553	189	210	3rd, North	2012	Out of playoffs
2012–13	76	35	31	3	7	80	.526	211	220	3rd, North	2013	Out of playoffs
2013–14	76	32	33	1	10	75	.492	200	235	4th, North	2014	Out of playoffs
2014–15	76	35	29	8	4	82	.539	211	240	4th, Midwest	2015	Out of playoffs

Players

Current roster

Captains

Name	Years
Mark Rycroft	2007–2008
Wyatt Smith	2008
Brian Willsie	2008–2010
David Liffiton	2010–2012
Bryan Lerg	2012–2014
Brian Sutherby	2013
Bruno Gervais	2014–2015
Ryan Craig	2015–

Retired numbers

No Monsters player has had his number retired. However the team has retired the numbers of players who have played on past Cleveland franchises to honor the city's hockey history.^[6]

Name	Number
Johnny Bower	1 (Barons)
Fred Glover	9 (Barons)
Jock Callander	15 (Lumberjacks)

Team records

Single season

Goals: 30, Andrew Agozzino (2014–15)

Assists: 50, T.J. Hensick (2009–10)

Points: 70 T.J. Hensick (2009–10), Ben Walter (2010–11)

Penalty Minutes: 215, Daniel Maggio (2014–15)

Wins: 23 Jason Bacashihua (2010–11), Calvin Pickard (2014–15)

GAA: 2.11, Cedrick Desjardins (2011–12)

SV%: .932, Cedrick Desjardins (2011–12)

Shutouts: 8, Tyler Weiman (2008–09)

Goaltending records need a minimum 25 games played by the goaltender

Career

Career Goals: Andrew Agozzino, 67

Career Assists: Andrew Agozzino, 98

Career Points: Andrew Agozzino, 165

Career Penalty Minutes: Daniel Maggio, 522

Career Goaltending Wins: Calvin Pickard, 60

Career Shutouts: Tyler Weiman, 13

Career Games: Andrew Agozzino, 225

Firsts and Franchise records

Franchise First Game: October 6, 2007. Grand Rapids Griffins 3, Lake Erie Monsters 2
Franchise First Win: October 20, 2007. Lake Erie Monsters 3, Syracuse Crunch 2.
Franchise First Goal: October 6, 2007. Grand Rapids Griffins 3, Lake Erie Monsters 2. Goal scored by Matt Hussey
Franchise First Shutout: November 15, 2007. Jason Bacashihua. Lake Erie Monsters 2, Quad City Flames 0.
Franchise First Hat Trick: November 17, 2007. Chris Stewart. Lake Erie Monsters 5, Toronto Marlies 3.
Franchise Most Goals in a Game: December 3, 2010. 4-Patrick Rissmiller. Lake Erie Monsters 6, Chicago Wolves 3.
Franchise Most Wins in a Season: 44 (2010–11)
Franchise Most Points in a Season: 96 (2010–11)
Franchise Most Games Won in a Row: 8 (2010–11)
Franchise First Playoff Game: April 16, 2011. (vs Manitoba Moose)
Franchise First Playoff Goal: April 16, 2011 (by Matthew Ford)
Franchise First Playoff Win: April 16, 2011 (Monsters 6, Manitoba Moose 4)

Media

During the 2015–16 AHL season, radio play-by-play coverage will be split by Cleveland AM stations WHK (1420 AM) and WKNR (850 AM), as well as 99X – the WMMS-HD2 digital subchannel (100.7-HD2 FM) which also simulcasts over low-power FM translator W256BT (99.1 FM). WHK will air 18 regular season games; WKNR will air 32 games; and 22 will air on 99X (WKNR sister station WWGK is scheduled to air the remaining 4 games). Tony Brown serves as play-by-play announcer.^[8]

Select Monsters games will be televised, with WUAB channel 43 and Fox Sports Ohio serving as the outlets. The broadcast team consists of play-by-play announcer Tony Brown, former Cleveland Lumberjacks player Jock Callander as analyst, and WHBC afternoon host Kenny Roda as rink side/locker room reporter. All televised games are also simulcast on the radio.^[8]^[9]

Mascot and entertainment

The Monsters' official mascot is a seagull character named "Sullivan C. Goal" (aka "Sully").^[10] Other aspects of the in-game entertainment include the "Mullet Brothers" (characters based on the Hanson Brothers from the movie Slap Shot),^[11] and the "Monsters Hockey Girls" cheerleaders.^[12]

References

-- Module:Hatnote -- -- -- -- This module produces hatnote links and links to related articles. It -- -- implements the and meta-templates and includes -- -- helper functions for other Lua hatnote modules. --

local libraryUtil = require('libraryUtil') local checkType = libraryUtil.checkType local mArguments -- lazily initialise Module:Arguments local yesno -- lazily initialise Module:Yesno

local p = {}

-- Helper functions

local function getArgs(frame) -- Fetches the arguments from the parent frame. Whitespace is trimmed and -- blanks are removed. mArguments = require('Module:Arguments') return mArguments.getArgs(frame, {parentOnly = true}) end

local function removeInitialColon(s) -- Removes the initial colon from a string, if present. return s:match('^:?(.*)') end

function p.findNamespaceId(link, removeColon) -- Finds the namespace id (namespace number) of a link or a pagename. This -- function will not work if the link is enclosed in double brackets. Colons -- are trimmed from the start of the link by default. To skip colon -- trimming, set the removeColon parameter to true. checkType('findNamespaceId', 1, link, 'string') checkType('findNamespaceId', 2, removeColon, 'boolean', true) if removeColon ~= false then link = removeInitialColon(link) end local namespace = link:match('^(.-):') if namespace then local nsTable = mw.site.namespaces[namespace] if nsTable then return nsTable.id end end return 0 end

function p.formatPages(...) -- Formats a list of pages using formatLink and returns it as an array. Nil -- values are not allowed. local pages = {...} local ret = {} for i, page in ipairs(pages) do ret[i] = p._formatLink(page) end return ret end

function p.formatPageTables(...) -- Takes a list of page/display tables and returns it as a list of -- formatted links. Nil values are not allowed. local pages = {...} local links = {} for i, t in ipairs(pages) do checkType('formatPageTables', i, t, 'table') local link = t[1] local display = t[2] links[i] = p._formatLink(link, display) end return links end

function p.makeWikitextError(msg, helpLink, addTrackingCategory) -- Formats an error message to be returned to wikitext. If -- addTrackingCategory is not false after being returned from -- Module:Yesno, and if we are not on a talk page, a tracking category -- is added. checkType('makeWikitextError', 1, msg, 'string') checkType('makeWikitextError', 2, helpLink, 'string', true) yesno = require('Module:Yesno') local title = mw.title.getCurrentTitle() -- Make the help link text. local helpText if helpLink then helpText = ' (help)' else helpText = end -- Make the category text. local category if not title.isTalkPage and yesno(addTrackingCategory) ~= false then category = 'Hatnote templates with errors' category = string.format( '%s:%s', mw.site.namespaces[14].name, category ) else category = end return string.format( '%s', msg, helpText, category ) end

-- Format link -- -- Makes a wikilink from the given link and display values. Links are escaped -- with colons if necessary, and links to sections are detected and displayed -- with " § " as a separator rather than the standard MediaWiki "#". Used in -- the template.

function p.formatLink(frame) local args = getArgs(frame) local link = args[1] local display = args[2] if not link then return p.makeWikitextError( 'no link specified', 'Template:Format hatnote link#Errors', args.category ) end return p._formatLink(link, display) end

function p._formatLink(link, display) -- Find whether we need to use the colon trick or not. We need to use the -- colon trick for categories and files, as otherwise category links -- categorise the page and file links display the file. checkType('_formatLink', 1, link, 'string') checkType('_formatLink', 2, display, 'string', true) link = removeInitialColon(link) local namespace = p.findNamespaceId(link, false) local colon if namespace == 6 or namespace == 14 then colon = ':' else colon = end -- Find whether a faux display value has been added with the | magic -- word. if not display then local prePipe, postPipe = link:match('^(.-)|(.*)$') link = prePipe or link display = postPipe end -- Find the display value. if not display then local page, section = link:match('^(.-)#(.*)$') if page then display = page .. ' § ' .. section end end -- Assemble the link. if display then return string.format('%s', colon, link, display) else return string.format('%s%s', colon, link) end end

-- Hatnote -- -- Produces standard hatnote text. Implements the template.

function p.hatnote(frame) local args = getArgs(frame) local s = args[1] local options = {} if not s then return p.makeWikitextError( 'no text specified', 'Template:Hatnote#Errors', args.category ) end options.extraclasses = args.extraclasses options.selfref = args.selfref return p._hatnote(s, options) end

function p._hatnote(s, options) checkType('_hatnote', 1, s, 'string') checkType('_hatnote', 2, options, 'table', true) local classes = {'hatnote'} local extraclasses = options.extraclasses local selfref = options.selfref if type(extraclasses) == 'string' then classes[#classes + 1] = extraclasses end if selfref then classes[#classes + 1] = 'selfref' end return string.format( '

', table.concat(classes, ' '), s )

end

return p-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Module:Hatnote -- -- -- -- This module produces hatnote links and links to related articles. It -- -- implements the and meta-templates and includes -- -- helper functions for other Lua hatnote modules. --