The Canucks are going to the semi-finals!

No, not the Vancouver Canucks, and not the NHL semis. But it’s exciting all the same that, with a dominant 5-0 victory in Monday’s decisive Game 5, the Abbotsford Canucks have punched their ticket to the AHL Western Conference Final, where they’ll face the Texas Stars.

This is a first for the Abbotsford franchise, and it’s also something that hasn’t happened all that frequently for any Canucks-affiliated farm team. In fact, Vancouver affiliates have only made it this far in the AHL playoffs three times in the last three decades.

When a farm team experiences success like this, it’s natural for fans of the big club to wonder what it might mean for them down the road. With that in mind, we decided to take a look at those three most recent deep AHL playoff runs, to see what long-term impacts they might have made on the NHL side of things.

This year’s Moose made it to the AHL semis, where they lost to the Chicago Wolves. And, really, making a playoff run in this particular AHL season is a noteworthy accomplishment. This was the season of the full-year NHL lockout, which resulted in many players who would have otherwise been in the big leagues staying in the minors for an extra year. The result was the strongest field of competition ever seen in the AHL.

For the Canucks franchise, this was also a year in which the foundation was laid for their eventual run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011. The 2004/05 Moose roster included a 20-year-old Ryan Kesler (nine points in 14 playoff games), Alex Burrows, Kevin Bieksa, and Rick Rypien.

This incredibly-loaded Moose team also included some familiar faces like leading playoff scorers Josh Green and Lee Goren, former first round pick Nathan Smith, future coaches Nolan Baumgartner and Jason King, and enforcer Wade Brookbank.

Alex Auld backed up Wade Flaherty in net.

The impact on Vancouver was both immediate and long-lasting. All of Kesler, Burrows, Bieksa, Baumgartner, Green, Goren, and Auld would play significant minutes for the 2005/06 Canucks. They missed the playoffs that year, but made them the next year in 2006/07.

And then, of course, not too long after that came the 2011 run, where Kesler, Burrows, and Bieksa would all play extremely prominent roles. There’s no real doubt that this 2005 run, then, had some serious long-term benefits for the parent club.

A few years down the road from 2005, the Manitoba Moose made an even deeper run, reaching the Calder Cup Finals, where they lost to the Hershey Bears.

But this edition of the Moose looks a lot different than the 2005 squad.

Sure, there are some familiar faces. Current skills and skating coach Jason Krog led the team in scoring in both the regular season (86 points in 74 games) and the playoffs (23 in 22). He was followed by occasional Canuck call-up Jason Jaffray and former first rounder Michael Grabner (17 points in 20 playoff games).

Most of the rest of the names are of those who only ever achieved cups of coffee with the Canucks. Guillaume Desbiens, Alex Bolduc, Mario Bliznak, PC Labrie, and the like. Oh, and Baumgartner had returned to the fold by this point.

There are two names of note at the polar opposite ends of their careers. Cody Hodgson’s Draft+1 season had just wrapped up with the Brampton Battalion, and so he signed on with the Moose for their run, playing in 11 postseason games and putting up six points. That was about half the contribution of the 41-year-old veteran Mike Keane, with 11 points in 22 playoff games in what would be his second-to-last season of hockey.

But the only player of the bunch to have any (on-ice) long-term impact on the Vancouver roster was the player between the pipes. Cory Schneider was just 22 and in his second season of professional hockey when he started all 22 Moose games on their run to the finals. He posted a .922 save percentage and a GAA of 2.15 on the run. Following the playoffs, Schneider was named the AHL’s goalie of the year.

Schneider would have one more year of AHL hockey ahead of him, appearing in 66 more games for the Moose in 2009/10 before becoming Roberto Luongo’s full-time backup in 2010/11. The rest, as they say, is history.

The most recent time a Canucks affiliate has reached the AHL semis, and the only time as the Utica Comets, came a full decade ago.

This roster is more in keeping with the 2009 Moose than it is the 2005 Moose, meaning a distinct lack of memorable faces.

The Comets were led in both regular season (61 points in 76 games) and playoff scoring (19 in 23) by Cal O’Reilly, AHL vet and brother of Ryan.

O’Reilly was trailed by Sven Baertschi, acquired midway through the year from the Calgary Flames. Baertschi had managed 15 points in 15 games for the Comets in the regular season, and added another 15 in 23 for the postseason at the age of 22.

Beyond those two, however, there’s not a ton of note. Adam Clendening had also arrived partway through the year in the now-infamous Gustav Forsling trade. A grand total of three first round busts were on this Comets roster in Brendan Gaunce, Nicklas Jensen, and Hunter Shinkaruk, though at this point only Shinkaruk had any Vancouver ice-time left in his future.

Alex Biega proved important to the Comets blueline on this playoff run, and that earned him an eventual shot with the Canucks. Frankie Corrado made an impact as a sophomore pro, but not enough to stick with the team beyond the next season.

And, hey, speaking of busts, Jake Virtanen joined the Comets for this run…and did nothing, posting zero points in ten postseason games. Maybe that should have been taken as a sign.

In any case, the 2015 Comets, like the 2009 Moose, are all about the goaltender. Jacob Markstrom started all 23 games for the Moose, posting a .925 save percentage and a 2.11 GAA. This was the season in which Markstrom was somewhat inexplicably waived out of training camp, and somewhat more inexplicably passed through waivers unclaimed. He wouldn’t go on waivers again, however – after this run, Markstrom became a full-time NHL goalie, and hasn’t looked back since.

Beyond him, however, it’s hard to argue that these Comets, who lost that year’s Calder Cup to Manchester, had much of a long-term effect at the NHL level.