The Providence Bruins beat the Charlotte Checkers 3-0 on Sunday afternoon, their seventh win in a row and eighth in their last ten games.
However, the win was a bit more notable for another reason: Georgii Merkulov became the new all-time leading scorer in franchise history, as he recorded an assist in the win.
That assist gave Merkulov 211 career AHL points, one more than Andy Hilbert recorded as a member of the Providence Bruins.
In his AHL career, the Russian winger now has 84G-127A-211PTS totals in 240 games over parts of five AHL seasons.
Hilbert, who had cups of coffee with the NHL Bruins and went on to have a decent NHL run with the New York Islanders, recored 101G-109A-21oPTS totals in 234 games with Providence.
Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see that this is Merkulov’s fifth AHL season, and even more surprised to see that he was now the franchise’s leading scorer.
That’s not meant as a knock on Merkulov, rather that I assumed there might have been a more prolific, long-time AHLer who had a higher mark over a longer period of time.
However, Merkulov has been consistently productive for Providence: coming into the current season, he led the P-Bruins in scoring three seasons in a row, which had never happened before.
Regardless, it’s a nice milestone for Merkulov, who has played 11 games at the NHL level and is still looking for his first goal.
The Bruins signed Merkulov to an entry-level contract in April of 2022, after just one season at Ohio State University.
He signed a one-year, two-way contract extension last summer. He’s now waiver-eligible, and had to clear when he was cut from training camp prior to this season.
Whether or not he gets another crack at the NHL roster remains to be seen, but being any franchise’s all-time leading scorer is no small feat.