Ellis the rock Philly needs to pair with Provorov
Just minutes into a Windsor Spitfires intrasquad scrimmage in 2007, former Spitfires and Flyers forward Eric Wellwood realized he completely underestimated rookie defenseman Ryan Ellis.
Wellwood’s misconception began a few months earlier when the Spitfires selected the 5-foot10, 179-pound Ellis in the second round, 22nd overall in the 2007 OHL draft. The previous season, the average Spitfires defenseman measured 6-foot-1 and weighed roughly 200 pounds.
“They liked big size guys, and then they drafted this little guy that all the sudden, came to camp and you could tell right away that he was the best defenseman,” Wellwood said.
“You can watch a player and you can kind of tell what they’re thinking and he’s always thinking the game,” Wellwood, now head coach of the ECHL’s Newfoundland Growlers, said. “He’s not just going out there to play. He’s thinking the game and playing it like chess, almost. You could tell every single play that he made was the right play.”
For the last 15 years, Ellis, a self-described “pretty smart kid” in grade school, has used his intelligence to compensate for his lack of size. Naturally, he enjoyed studying science more than any other subject in school. From dissecting fetal pigs to picking apart an opponent’s forecheck, Ellis was interested in understanding how life, and each play in a hockey game, worked.
That mindset carried Ellis to the pinnacles of success at every level of the sport, from back-toback Memorial Cup wins with the Spitfires, three medals at the World Juniors Championships for Canada, a Stanley Cup Final run with the Nashville Predators
in 2017, and now to the top pairing of the Flyers.
“It was more a game within the game of me outsmarting, whether it be the guy next to me or the guy making the play or whatever it was,” Ellis said. “Honestly, it just came naturally to me. That’s how I survived, I guess.”
An offensive defenseman
Dating back to his junior career, Ellis, 30, has been recognized for his elite offensive skills. Flyers forward Scott Laughton, who played for the OHL’s Oshawa Generals, has been familiar with the Hamilton, Ontario native since junior.
“I think he was the best player in junior I’ve ever played against, honestly,” Laughton said. “I was asked that question a couple years ago, and I always go back to him. Their team was so good. He was dominant.”
As a 17-year-old at his first World Juniors in 2009, Ellis was selected by Canada because of his power-play prowess. In a six-on-five scenario when Canada pulled its goalie down 5-4 to Russia in the semifinals, Ellis made a great play to keep the puck in the offensive zone. His play led to Jordan Eberle’s game-tying goal, as Canada went on to win gold.
Later that year, the Predators drafted Ellis 11th overall before taking defenseman Mattias Ekholm in the fourth round, 102nd overall.
“When he came in, he was all offense,” Ekholm said. “Like, almost only power play for some of the World Juniors that I remember way back in the day. So he was so offensive, but as he came to development camps and as we started to grow up with the minor league system and then with Nashville, he just became really solid defensively, too, which is really impressive for a guy his size.”