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During the 2025-26 AHL season, Greg Cronin (back row, in glasses) coached the Iowa Wild to a 27-36-6-3 record. (Courtesy Iowa Wild)<\/p>\nWhen you get assigned to the American Hockey League \u2014 the NHL\u2019s top developmental league \u2014 your ultimate goal is to get to \u201cthe show\u201d and work at the highest level of the game in North America.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, Greg Cronin\u2019s departure after just one season as head coach of the Iowa Wild, Minnesota\u2019s Des Moines-based AHL team, is not too surprising.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously with Greg\u2019s pedigree and Greg\u2019s experience, I didn\u2019t know how long we\u2019d have him in Des Moines,\u201d said Matt Hendricks, who recently completed his second season as the Iowa general manager. \u201cWe were the beneficiary for sure of getting the opportunity to have him be the boots on the ground, the guy in charge, the guy managing our young draft picks down there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cronin, 63, was hired as an assistant coach by St. Louis last week, returning to the NHL after his time with the Wild. He previously was head coach of the Anaheim Ducks for two seasons.<\/p>\n
Cronin\u2019s time in Iowa will not be commemorated with any banners hung from the rafters of Casey\u2019s Center \u2014 the 15,000-seat downtown Des Moines arena that has housed the Wild since Minnesota moved its AHL team to its neighboring state in 2013. Iowa finished 27-36-6-3 last season, two points out of the cellar in the AHL\u2019s Central Division, and missed the playoffs.<\/p>\n
During the 2025-26 AHL season, Greg Cronin (back row, in glasses) coached the Iowa Wild to a 27-36-6-3 record. (Courtesy Iowa Wild)<\/p>\n
With the NHL club battling injuries early in the season, key players who would have done well to develop in the AHL were called up to the Minnesota Wild, and the Iowa team struggled as a result, winning just five games in the season\u2019s first two months.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the season, a dozen members of the Iowa Wild saw time in a Minnesota sweater.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a struggle. The wins and losses aside, we were putting some of our younger players, some of our less experienced players, in positions where the odds of succeeding were going to be difficult no matter what,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cThe results were not what we wanted. But what was immediately evident to me was Greg Cronin and the way he ran day-to-day operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some improvement<\/p>\n
The Iowa Wild refined their game as the season went on and were playing .500 or better hockey by March and April. But they had dug too deep a hole early in the season to reel in a playoff spot. Since the Wild\u2019s top affiliate moved to Iowa 13 years ago, the franchise has made the postseason just twice.<\/p>\n
With Cronin joining Jim Montgomery\u2019s staff on a Blues team that missed the most recent NHL playoffs, Hendricks is charged with finding a new coach in Iowa that will work within the Wild\u2019s system and have his players prepared for John Hynes-style hockey if and when they get the call.<\/p>\n
Hendricks played prep hockey for Blaine and college hockey at St. Cloud State before logging more than 600 games in the NHL for a sextet of teams, finishing his playing career with Minnesota in 2018. He said that having a similar mindset to the NHL team\u2019s coaches is a factor in the search.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, one of the more important things is that the new coach doesn\u2019t have a problem mimicking strategic game plans in terms of the kind of hockey we play and our DNA as an organization,\u201d Hendricks said. \u201cWhen it comes down to Xs and Os, the way we forecheck, the way we defend, I want it to mimic the NHL team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iowa ice time<\/p>\n
Winters get cold in Iowa, similar to their neighbors to the north. The lakes \u2014 although there are significantly fewer than in Minnesota \u2014 freeze over so kids can skate, and there are NHL teams to the north, east and south of Iowa.<\/p>\n
But only four men born in the state have ever made it to the NHL. That list includes current Wild third-string goalie Cal Petersen, who is originally from Waterloo.<\/p>\n
While the junior level USHL flourishes there, with teams in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Des Moines, Dubuque and Sioux City, and two more just over the state\u2019s western border in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Omaha, Neb., hockey in the home of Hawkeyes and Cyclones suffered a blow recently.<\/p>\n
The Iowa Heartlanders of the ECHL, who played just outside Iowa City and were the Wild\u2019s affiliate one level down from the AHL, suspended operations at the end of the 2025-26 season after averaging a league-worst 1,600 fans a game in their 4,800-seat arena.<\/p>\n
The Wild\u2019s new ECHL affiliate will be based in Jacksonville, Fla., giving Hendricks a greater geographic challenge when it comes to moving players between the ECHL and AHL teams. The Heartlanders were based roughly 90 minutes from Des Moines, while Jacksonville \u2014 which led the league in average attendance with 9,100 a game last season \u2014 is considerably further away.<\/p>\n
The Iowa Wild averaged better than 6,100 per game last season, which put them right in the middle of the AHL pack in terms of ticket sales, despite their on-ice struggles at times. Hendricks said their presence and competitiveness is a vital part of the hockey scene in this state of 3.2 million \u2014 roughly one-fourth of which live in metro Des Moines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI give a ton of credit to our business staff there. They work very diligently to get out in the community and help grow the game,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Wild logo is well-represented, we have a great arena, and we have great fan support. We have people behind us in Des Moines, and we\u2019re fortunate for that, because the results haven\u2019t been where we want them or expect them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just like his counterparts at the NHL level, the next Iowa Wild coach will be tasked with giving the fans a much-desired playoff run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing I want more than to give them some playoff hockey going forward,\u201d Hendricks said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you get assigned to the American Hockey League \u2014 the NHL\u2019s top developmental league \u2014 your ultimate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,161,38,5280,4,43,162],"class_list":["post-603818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-wild","tag-hockey","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-minnesotawild","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-wild"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116788628434201601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}