The Nashville Predators American Hockey league affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals, may not have won the Calder Cup Trophy, but it’s hard to argue they weren’t the best team in the AHL in 2019.

Before the coronavirus canceled the AHL season 63 games in, the Admirals were sitting atop the league standings, leading the Central Division by eight points with an AHL-best 41-14-5-3 record and 90 points.

Scott Nichol, Predators director of player development and Admirals general manager, attributed the team’s success to its perfect blend of offensive skill, defensive prowess and perhaps the top goaltending tandem in the league.

“We had a really good run,” Nichol said in a video interview for the team’s website. “We’ve instilled a great culture there. I think we’re a little bit of a throwback, old-school team. We like to get at it. We’ve got probably four or five guys that don’t shy away from the physicality.

“What I love about it is we can play any style. We have enough skill between the [Eeli} Tolvanen’s, the [Rem] Pitlick’s, Daniel Carr and Tommy Novak. We’ve got the rough and tumble [players] like [Mattheiu} Olivier and Tanner [Jeannot]…Jarred Tinorid was with us. It’s a really good group there.”

The Admirals scored the second-most goals in the AHL (211), led by Carr, who was the league’s 10^th-leading scorer with 50 points and 23 goals in 47 games. Novak (11 goals, 42 points), Tolvanen (21 goals, 36 points) and Pitlick (20 goals, 36 points) were all right behind.

Milwaukee also surrendered the fewest goals in the league (141), while the goalie duo of Troy Grosenick and Connor Ingram, both ranked in the league’s top 10 in wins, goals-against average and save percentage.

Ingram won 21 games (third) with a 1.92 GAA (third) and a .933 save percentage (third), while Grosenick won 20 games (sixth) with a 2.29 GAA (seventh) and .920 save percentage (eighth).

“As everyone knows, your team is only as good as your goaltending,” Nichol continued. “We had our backbone there with [Troy] Grosenick and [Connor] Ingram back there…It was a little different this year both [Grosenick and Ingram] went back and forth. Both of them played no matter what.”

The list of the Admirals’ 2019 accomplishments is seemingly never-ending, including a franchise-record 13-game win streak, the team’s second regular-season AHL championship, third Western Conference championship and sixth Central Division championship.

While a few players such as defenseman Alex Carrier and forward Yakov Trenin might find themselves trading in their navy blue and white sweaters for Preds’ gold next season, Nichol believes with most of the Admirals’ core returning, 2020 can be just as successful as, if not better than, this year.

“You don’t get to build those teams too often like that, especially at the minor-league level,” Nichol said. “But we’ve got a lot of those guys coming back next year and fighting for spots [in Nashville].

“…We don’t want to keep them in Milwaukee. We want to get them to Nashville and help out the Preds and, like they say, the road to Nashville goes through Milwaukee.”