DES MOINES, Iowa – The Checkers got the 2015-16 season off to a flying start on Saturday, defeating the Iowa Wild 4-1 on Saturday thanks to a pair of goals by second-year forward Brock McGinn.
Rookie Sergey Tolchinsky and veteran T.J. Hensick also scored for Charlotte, which gave coach Mark Morris a win in his Checkers debut.
One of last season’s top rookies and one of the final cuts from the NHL’s Carolina 
Hurricanes this season, McGinn recorded the third multi-goal game of his career. Exactly two minutes after Tolchinsky scored the game’s first goal just before the five-minute mark of the first period, McGinn netted his first on a breakaway after taking advantage of a broken stick by Iowa defenseman Mike Reilly.
After Iowa clawed one back on a power-play goal by Reilly as the Checkers ran into penalty trouble in the second period, McGinn then provided some breathing room midway through the third by blasting a shot from the top of the left circle off a nice feed from longtime Checkers scorer Zach Boychuk.
Hensick, a perennial top scorer in the AHL who was playing his first game for the Checkers, iced the game with a power-play goal in the final minutes of regulation.
Earlier in the game, Tolchinsky, an exciting offensive prospect who dazzled with an array of highlight-reel goals in junior hockey, had gotten the Checkers on the board by using his speed to get behind two Iowa defenders and out-wait diving goaltender Jeremy Smith for his first goal as a professional.
Defensemen Jaccob Slavin and Tyler Ganly assisted on that goal, making it a trio of first-year players who accounted for the Checkers’ first goal of the season.
NOTES
McGinn, the Hurricanes’ second-round draft pick in 2013, ranked third on the Checkers with 15 goals last season … Morris now has 339 AHL victories … Hensick finished in the top 10 in AHL scoring four times in the last five seasons … The Checkers started on the road for the sixth time in their sixth AHL campaigns and are now 3-3-0 in season openers … The Carolina Hurricanes assigned defenseman Danny Biega to Charlotte immediately following the game … Iowa forwards Brett Sutter and Zac Dalpe rank third and fourth on the Checkers’ all-time scoring list, respectively … The Checkers and Wild face off again Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern. It will be the second of Charlotte’s 10 consecutive road games to open the season.
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