Ellis is OK with potential five-series summer run
Flamborough NHL veteran thinks playoff plan is fair, and wide open
Not every player, even on his own team, favours the Stanley Cup playoff format if the National Hockey League can indeed return to play, perhaps by late August.
But Flamborough’s Ryan Ellis, still a year shy of his 30th birthday but in his ninth season on the Nashville blue line, gives it a thumbs-up despite the fact the Predators had been inhabiting the final playoff spot when the schedule was curtailed, then cancelled.
Now, if the NHL’s four-tiered return blueprint can reach its final stage, Nashville will face the Arizona Coyotes in a short (best-of-five) and perilous play-in round for the right to join the four top Western Conference seeds. The east and west division play-ins will reduce the field from 24 contenders to 16, the usual number for the Stanley Cup tournament.
In January, Nashville replaced head coach Peter Laviolette, who’d taken the Preds to the 2017 Stanley Cup final, with John Hynes and, while Ellis says the team was still adjusting, they had gathered momentum and were playing the kind of hockey “that felt more like us.”
The season paused with the Predators occupying the second wildcard berth in the west. They had 13 games remaining, with 12 left for the Coyotes, who were three places and four points behind them.
“We’ve had long talks about it with our team and some guys are upset,” says Ellis, who averages a point for every two NHL games he plays. “But I look at it as we were in a dogfight and it was probably going to come down to the last couple of games. If we lost a couple of games and Arizona won a couple, we were tied so we were in a play-in anyway. Now, instead of a 12-13 game playin, it’s five games.
“I think it’s fair. I don’t know if
Montreal or Chicago would have had a real shot, but they were still in it, so they should have a chance to play for it.”
Ellis, who’d been off the ice since mid-March, resumed skating at Stoney Creek’s Gateway Ice Centre this week with three other pros he’s known and trained with for years: Tyler Gaudet, Ryan O’Connor and Jeremy Williams.
He says that player health and safety is the No. 1 priority of the NHL’s potential return, and isn’t overly concerned about the personal risks, but adds he and all his NHLers should appreciate even the possibility of returning to a game they love, and the chance for the athletes and league to recoup some income during the widespread economic devastation of the pandemic.
On the ice, though, Ellis guesses it will not be business as usual. Analyze and predict all you want, but there’s no real form chart. Good goaltending, timely breaks and getting hot at the right time, as the St.
Louis Blues did last year, will play their traditional roles, “but I don’t think you can relate this to any sort of experience that any team’s ever had in the past,” he said.
“Times are very different. There isn’t any way you can write this up perfectly to be ready. What we’re going to potentially have to do is win five series: I’ve been working out for 2 1 ⁄ months and just started 2 skating now, but it’s not the normal skating to get ready to play, with guys from your own team. I don’t really know whether I’m going to be fully prepared when we play Arizona, but it’s the same for everybody,” Ellis added.
“You look at Boston, an unbelievable team with veteran guys, but maybe a young team like the Leafs get back quicker to skating up to speed? But, then, maybe the older guys are preparing better,” he said.
“I wouldn’t want to bet on any of this.”