Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Summer’s months for young prospects mean a time to rest, recover and build for training camp in September.
For goaltender Tomas Suchanek, that was last summer’s plan. Until it wasn’t.
A ruptured ACL led to knee surgery in September, and Suchanek missed the entire 2024-25 season following a strong rookie campaign. Undrafted and playing on an AHL contract, Suchanek began 2023-24 in the ECHL before going 14-10-5 with a 2.92 goals-against average and a .910 save percentage with the San Diego Gulls. Anaheim signed him to a three-year entry-level contract in March 2024.
The 22-year-old Suchanek began the long, tedious process of rehabilitating. With such a long-term injury to one of its organizational goaltenders, the Ducks needed to move on quickly by necessity. Anaheim scrambled to sign veteran Oscar Dansk to take Suchanek’s place in San Diego alongside Calle Clang.
Suchanek finally got back to work earlier this month at Anaheim’s three-day development camp held at the team’s practice facility in Irvine, Calif. He joined a pair of prospects who had brief stints with San Diego this past season, Vyacheslav Buteyets and Damian Clara.
“It’s awesome,” Suchanek said. “It’s really exciting. I was anxious to get back on the ice.”
Anaheim has already had success developing a franchise goaltender in San Diego. Lukas Dostal, who signed a five-year contract with the Ducks on Thursday, played 98 games with the Gulls across three seasons, and is poised to assume the number-one role in Anaheim after last month’s trade of John Gibson to Detroit. The depth chart also includes veterans Petr Mrazek and Ville Husso, in addition to the 23-year-olds Clang and Buteyets and 20-year-old Clara.
Somewhere in all of that mix is Suchanek, who was a Second Team All-Star in the Western Hockey League playing for Tri-City in 2022-23. He also took Czechia to a silver-medal finish at the IIHF World Junior Championship that year.
With so many prospects in the pipeline, Gulls goaltending coach Jeff Glass has a full contingent of talent to manage. Competition breeds growth, and there will be battles for playing time with the Gulls and their ECHL affiliate in Tulsa. With San Diego’s goaltending plans upended so late last summer, the Gulls struggled defensively and ended up allowing 3.49 goals per game, tied for second-most in the AHL.
Glass is familiar with what Suchanek is going through. A second-round draft pick by Ottawa, Glass spent four seasons between the AHL and ECHL before going to Europe for seven years. He didn’t reach the NHL until he was 32, in his 13th pro season. He knows the need for patience with young goaltenders, living it himself and now reinforcing it as a coach.
Glass is pleased with what he has seen from Suchanek, who used his rehabilitation time productively.
“Although he’s been off and away from the game on the ice, we’ve seen quite a bit of him off ice, and he’s put a lot of work in,” Glass said. “He’s come back with a fresh mind… He might be ahead of where he was. It’s really exciting for a guy like that who’s fresh, and he’s ready to go. The grind of the hockey season catches up to a guy, and you have to be away for a little while to really reignite that fire.”
