Firebirds captain Max McCormick retires after 12-year AHL career

Max McCormick’s retirement closed the book on a 12-year career that helped turn the Coachella Valley Firebirds from expansion team into a contender. The captain missed most of the 2024-25 season and all of 2025-26 because of injury, but his imprint in Palm Desert was already secure: 67 goals, 140 points and two Western Conference titles in the club’s first two seasons.

McCormick finished his AHL career with 540 games, 159 goals, 178 assists and 337 points across Coachella Valley, Charlotte, Chicago, Colorado, Belleville and Binghamton. He was more than a productive forward. He became the veteran presence a young franchise needed, the kind of captain whose voice carried as much weight as his scoring touch. Coachella Valley leaned on that steadiness while building a winning identity in a new market, and McCormick delivered the sort of nightly reliability that keeps a roster from drifting.

His best offensive season came in 2022-23, when he posted 28 goals, 39 assists and 67 points, then carried that form into the postseason. He also skated in the 2023 AHL All-Star Classic in Laval, Quebec, on Feb. 5-6, 2023, and earned selection to the 2022-23 AHL Second All-Star Team. Those numbers backed up what teammates and coaches already knew: McCormick was not simply a grinder or a placeholder captain. He was a top-line scorer when Coachella Valley needed one.

The playoff résumé was just as telling. McCormick produced 26 goals and 19 assists in 53 Calder Cup Playoff games, including a late tying goal in Game 2 against Calgary in the 2024 playoffs that helped keep the Firebirds alive in the series. He captained Coachella Valley to the Western Conference championship in each of the club’s first two seasons, a run that pushed the Firebirds to the Calder Cup Finals both times and established the organization as one of the league’s early success stories.

McCormick’s path to that role began long before Coachella Valley. The Ottawa Senators drafted him in the sixth round in 2011, 171st overall, and the Seattle Kraken later signed him as a free agent before their inaugural 2021-22 season. Born May 1, 1992, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he leaves the AHL with a résumé that says exactly why veteran captains still matter: they score, they stabilize, and they help championship-caliber teams grow up fast.