COVID-19 pandemic denies Belleville players a prime opportunity
AHL season cancellation will end Senators’ farm team’s chance for Calder Cup title run
The American Hockey League’s board of governors will gather Friday at 3 p.m. with the expectation the rest of the season and the playoffs will likely be cancelled.
Playing into the summer months in a lot of places with no fans isn’t an option for the NHL’s top development arm, which is a gate-driven league without a television contract. And Friday’s announcement will officially dash this season’s hope for a long playoff run for the Ottawa Senators’ AHL affiliate in Belleville.
“It’s probably the thing that hurts us the most with this organization with the (NHL) pause being on and the possibility of the AHL cancelling their season is the growth of all the prospects we have in Belleville,” Ottawa general manager Pierre Dorion said in a conference call with reporters last month.
Now, it would appear that’s about to become reality and it will be tough blow for the organization because the Senators were hoping the likes of Josh Norris, Vitaly Abramov, Drake Batherson, Alex Formenton, Erik Brannstrom, Marcus Hogberg, Filip Gustavsson and Joey Daccord would get significant post-season experience. Belleville was sitting in the top spot in its division under coach Troy Mann when play was halted by the growing spread of COVID -19.
Many around the AHL believe Belleville had a Calder Cup contender this season and playoff experience or winning a championship would have gone a long way toward helping the development for the players who are expected to be a big part of the rebuild in Ottawa.
Kurt Kleinendorst, 59, the only head coach of the Senators’ AHL affiliate to win the Calder Cup in the spring of 2011 when it was based in Binghamton, says it’s a missed opportunity for those players to learn what it takes to raise your game in the post-season.
“The biggest thing for them is they’ll never know,” Kleinendorst said Thursday afternoon from his home in Park City, Utah.
“You can say they missed out on the experience of winning in 2011, but they may have or they may not have. They could have been the Tampa Bay Lightning of last year and gotten eliminated in the first round because you don’t know the answer to that.
“But the answer to your question is they miss that feeling because no matter what, they were going to make the playoffs and there’s just a feeling. It’s just not the same as when you get up to play your 76th game of the AHL schedule.
“There’s this feeling that comes with being in the playoffs that you only get by being in the playoffs. It’s hard to explain but it’s just different even though everything is the same.
“You’re fortunate because it’s a special feeling that only comes by being there because of your accomplishments over the course of the regular season. In the playoffs, everything that comes along gets ramped up and the pressures are different.
“The only way you gain experience is through experience, but in this case it’s neutral for everybody.”
And if you ask Kleinendorst, the playoff run in Binghamton was invaluable for some players because it helped them with their confidence to make the move to the NHL level.
Among those on the team that went on to have careers in
Ottawa were the likes of Zack Smith, Mark Borowiecki, Colin Greening, Mike Hoffman, Eric Condra, Eric Gryba, Patrick Wiercioch and goaltender Robin Lehner.
The backup behind goaltender Barry Brust going into playoffs, Lehner took over in Game 5 of the B-Sens’ first-round series with Binghamton down 3-1 to Manchester, and never looked back on the way to beating Houston on the road in Game 6 to win the Calder Cup title.
“At some point, if you want to win a Stanley Cup or a Calder Cup, there’s generally a progression to teams and winning a championship. I’m not saying it can never happen, but to some degree that eliminates that progression to some degree,” said Kleinendorst, who had two stints behind the B-Sens bench and was let go by the organization after its first year in Belleville in 2017-18.
“It’s taking an experience of what it’s like to be in the playoffs, and even though the game is the same, the pressure is different.
“When you take a penalty, the pressure that comes with killing it is a little bit greater because the significance is more because it could be the difference between losing that game, losing a series and going home. It’s not like losing a regular season game. Every little thing matters and there’s a feeling that you have to conquer by not allowing the pressure to affect you.”
Kleinendorst, who spent last season with Nuremburg in the Deutsch Elite League, said the playoffs would have been a nice way for the current group to help develop its chemistry as Dorion moves this team into the next phase of its rebuild.
“When you go into battle, and you’re in the trenches and you’re next to some guy and you’ve got his back and he’s got your back, if you don’t think there’s a new connection there then think again,” said Kleinendorst. “As long as they’re at a point where they can benefit from that moment and I think this group is.
“Absolutely, you can grow through the playoffs and they moved forward as an organization. You cannot tell me that Robin Lehner didn’t benefit from going in and winning a Calder Cup.”