Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Gulutzan: ‘We will be a playoff team’

If one word could describe the 2004-05 season for the Las Vegas Wranglers, disjointed might be a good pick.

The Wranglers, whose weekend split against Alaska capped off a 31-33-8 season, went through many phases through the year.

There was the young group of largely untested players still feeling their way through the professional game at the start of the year.

There was the chaos of December, with penalty kills coming at every inopportune moment as officials put Billy Tibbetts and his teammates under a microscope.

February's Wranglers were a gritty squad, outmatched but still competing while the team desperately searched for a pure goal scorer.

And to close the year, the Wranglers started to look like the team that general manager Glen Gulutzan wanted all along, a tough team that gave 100 percent - give or take a "goat show" a team well out of playoff contention is bound to put on - and showed flashes of success.

Gulutzan said at the beginning of the season that this young team he'd put together might struggle. Six months after training camp opened, he said youth up front was the biggest factor in this season's struggles.

"We were just a lot younger," Gulutzan said. "We didn't have the offensive firepower we did last year."

It wasn't that the Wranglers didn't have that firepower on the roster. But that firepower was off doing greater things, with Dana Lattery and Dustin Johner called up to the AHL for the bulk of the year and Morten Ask caring for his ailing wife in Europe.

"We had a good defense, good goaltending, good hard-working forwards," Gulutzan said. "I think this team would have been more of a playoff team than last year's team ... we lost a couple key players. We just couldn't mount much offense. I think that's the biggest difference."

Just when the Wranglers had built some momentum on the annual character-building road trip back east, forward Billy Tibbetts joined the team and put the team on a month-long penalty kill.

Gulutzan had pursued Tibbetts since he was released by San Diego in November. The morning of Nov. 18 he practiced with the Wranglers at Bakersfield and that night, in his first game in a Las Vegas uniform, he cross-checked Condors forward Todd Alexander to the face, leaving Alexander with a concussion and Tibbetts with a 10-game suspension.

Tibbetts was released on Jan. 14 after assaulting San Diego's Scott Borders during a game at the Orleans Arena. In 13 games with Las Vegas, Tibbetts had five points and 132 penalty minutes. His 320 PIM overall this year was second in the ECHL, six minutes behind Louisiana's Doug McIver, who played in nearly twice as many games as Tibbetts.

"When Billy joined us, we didn't play so well, but after Christmas we went on a five-game winning streak with Billy Tibbetts in our lineup," Gulutzan said. "I think if Billy Tibbetts had played in here up to his potential, he certainly would have helped us. That didn't transpire. At times he hurt us. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But at times he helped us."

When things became clear that this year's Wranglers were out of time to make a playoff push, Gulutzan started dealing players for next year's team. In the early going, his deals appear shrewd.

Shawn Limpright was acquired at midseason by Gulutzan, and ended the year the team's active points leader with 30 in 42 games.

Gulutzan also sent popular left winger Doug Wright and defenseman Regan Darby to Augusta in exchange for center Matt Dzieduszycki, who had five goals and two assists in eight games. The Wranglers have future considerations coming to them from trades with Alaska and Florida.

"We made trades to try and make the organization better," Gulutzan said. "We felt we needed to get some more size up front. We feel we've addressed that in some of our trades. To get those players here, it'll certainly help us."

That core, along with the return of Ask and Chris Stanley, who was injured for the second half of this season after logging 36 points, leaves Gulutzan confident in next year's team.

"I give credit to our fans for supporting us. That last game was tremendous, having a full house on the last game for a non-playoff team," he said. "We will be a playoff team next year."

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