The 2026 Calder Cup Finals commence tonight at Allstate Arena (8 ET, 
, Sportsnet 360, NHL Network Radio) with Game 1 between two clubs who have made improbable runs to get here.
The Chicago Wolves finished 11th in the AHL’s overall standings during the regular season, while the Toronto Marlies came in 15th. But both earned their respective conference championships by eliminating some elite opponents.
Chicago’s run to their sixth Calder Cup Finals appearance included a division finals triumph over a 51-win, 107-point Grand Rapids team, followed by a victory in the Western Conference Finals that saw them go into Colorado and win Games 6 and 7 in a hostile Blue FCU Arena.
Bradly Nadeau (5-9-14), Ryan Suzuki (5-8-13) and Justin Robidas (6-6-12) are Chicago’s leading playoff scorers. Felix Unger Sörum (3-6-9) paced the Wolves with 66 points in the regular season, but he has missed the last five games due to injury.
Amir Miftakhov (2-0, 2.36, .940) started Games 6 and 7 of the conference finals in Colorado in place of an injured Cayden Primeau (8-6, 2.58, .919) and stopped 75 of 80 shots. Miftakhov was recalled to serve as Carolina’s emergency third goaltender last night behind Brandon Bussi and Pyotr Kochetkov.
The Wolves, Calder Cup champions in 2022, are looking for their second title during their partnership with the Carolina Hurricanes. The Canes also saw their prospects win a title when they were affiliated with the Charlotte Checkers in 2019. And with Carolina up 3-2 in the Stanley Cup Final, they could be the first organization to win both Cups in the same season since the New Jersey Devils and Albany River Rats in 1995.
Toronto, a .500 team at Christmas that wound up fourth in the North Division, went the distance to knock out Rochester in the first round. They trailed in the third period of winner-take-all Game 5’s at Laval and at Cleveland and took both series. And they prevailed in a six-game conference final against a 101-point Wilkes-Barre/Scranton team, winning twice in overtime and taking all three road games.
“We’ve got a great group of guys,” Marlies general manager Ryan Hardy said. “At this level the goal is always to, first and foremost, create the best environment that you can to develop players. Once we got going, we were off and running.”
Marlies forward Vinni Lettieri (8-9-17) is tied for the league lead in scoring this postseason, while captain Logan Shaw (7-8-15) and rookie Easton Cowan (7-6-13) have chipped in seven goals apiece. Defenseman William Villeneuve (2-14-16) saw a seven-game scoring streak end in the series finale against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
In net, Artur Akhtyamov (11-6, 2.12, .927) has made 15 consecutive starts, and stopped 71 of 73 shots in the last two games of the conference finals.
Quick Hits:
- Spiros Anastas, who took over as the Wolves’ head coach on Dec. 12, won a Calder Cup as an assistant with Grand Rapids in 2013. That was also the most recent year that a team reached the Calder Cup Finals following a mid-season coaching change – the Griffins’ opponent, the Syracuse Crunch, saw Rob Zettler replace Jon Cooper following Cooper’s promotion to Tampa Bay.
- Chicago’s power play is operating at 24.5 percent in the playoffs (13-for-53), while Toronto is right behind them at 23.2 percent (16-for-69).
- The Wolves and Marlies split four meetings in 2025-26. This is the first time since 2007 (Hamilton vs. Hershey) that Calder Cup finalists had met in the regular season.
- Teams from Chicago and Toronto are meeting for a professional hockey championship for the first time since the 1962 Stanley Cup Final, won in six games by the Maple Leafs over the Black Hawks.
