It seems a bit odd to have a non-developmental team in a developmental league.
The first thing is the rules on roster limits. They can have as many players on the roster as they like, but they can only play five players with more than four years professional experience in any game (goalies don't count). So, they can't fill their roster with veterans and play them all at once. They could sign a veteran core, keep it intact and give the vets all the playing time the coach and management wants to give them, but that's as far as it goes with that.
The second thing is how would they recruit younger players without a pathway to the NHL? I assume that most of the better young players on the margins of NHL rosters would be drafted and under contract to NHL teams. There are plenty of drafted but unsigned overage juniors not yet under contract to the NHL, others whose draft rights have expired and still more players will were never drafted, most of whom would jump at an AHL contract, but none of them would likely be a top talent.
The third thing is which NHL teams would want to lend good prospects to an AHL franchise outside of their own development system? Maybe players on the cusp of the ECHL, but probably not so much on the cusp of the NHL.
Would that leave the Wolves as a lunch-pail crew of grinders and veterans without the snipers and upwardly mobile young players that can put the puck in the net? I don't know because I don't watch too many AHL game, but I'd bet that Wolves' fans could straighten me out.
I'm presuming that the Wolves have all the finances already figured out. I also don't have a sense of what it costs to run an AHL franchise, but there's no spending cap and I'm mindful that the team I follow, the Leafs, apparently pour a lot more resources into their wholly owned AHL affiliate than the norm. I'm thinking of any independent minor league franchise without an NHL affiliation competing with other franchises in the same league that are bankrolled by the more profitable NHL teams, and I just don't know where that goes.
it seems like a square peg in a round hole to me.