The AHL still has quite a few franchises that are independently owned. A bunch are owned by the parent NHL teams, but many are still running themselves. So, until it becomes an absolute overwhelming majority of clubs owned by NHL teams, they probably won't switch away from the weekend-centric schedule.
As far as the weekday/weekend thing, little to go on this year as Hartford has only had one mid-week home game. The attendance was 1367. Attendance for the other home games was 6112 (the opener, outlier), 1834, 2672, and 2880. I checked last November--they had no mid-week home games in October--and the two Wednesday games were 1860 and 1625. The weekend games were 4735, 2052, 2312, and 4571. Incredibly small sample, but it seems accurate from what I've seen watching AHL games over the years. There are die-hard local fans who go whenever, but otherwise the minor league teams (this is the same for baseball in my experience) rely on families to come out to pump up the numbers, and that primarily happens on weekends. No school nights to worry about or anything--same reason a lot of the Sunday games are in the afternoon or earlier in the evening. They need the kiddos to come.
