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Wolves Name Granato Head Coach

August 1, 2008

CHICAGO - The Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League announced that they have named former ECHL coach Don Granato as their new head coach.

The Gwinnett Gladiators are the ECHL affiliate of the Wolves of the AHL and the Atlanta Thrashers of the National Hockey League.

Granato led Peoria to a 45-20-5 record and the Kelly Cup championship in 1999-2000 after spending two seasons as head coach and general manager for Columbus.

He left Peoria to become head coach of Worcester in the AHL and was named AHL Coach of the Year in his first season after leading the IceCats to a team record 48 wins and their first regular season championship.

The 40 year old was 198-141-61 in five seasons with Worcester before departing the team for health reasons. He returned to coaching in 2005-06 working as an assistant coach for the St. Louis Blues of the NHL.

The brother of Colorado Avalanche head coach Tony Granato and U.S. Olympian Cammi Granato, Don Granato most recently was a scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League.

The AHL Coach of the Year award has been won the last three years by a former ECHL coach with Scott Gordon in 2007-08, Mike Haviland in 2006-07 and Kevin Dineen in 2005-06. ECHL coaches have won the award seven times in the last eight years including four consecutive years from 2001-04 with Claude Noel (2004), Geoff Ward (2003), Bruce Cassidy (2002) and Don Granato (2001). The first former ECHL coach to win the award was former Wheeling and current Carolina Hurricanes head coach Peter Laviolette in 1999.

The ECHL had affiliations with 26 of the 29 teams in the AHL in 2007-08, marking the seventh consecutive season that it has had affiliations with 20 or more teams in the AHL. In the last six seasons the ECHL has had more call ups to the AHL than all other professional leagues combined with more than 2,300 call ups involving more than 1,200 players and in the last three seasons there have been more than 225 players who have played in both the ECHL and the AHL in the same season. The AHL has 10 former ECHL coaches who are head coaches and 14 others who are assistant coaches while almost 500 players with ECHL experience played in the league last year.

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