When the ECHL took the lead among the top three North American professional hockey leagues and announced they would begin play on December 11 it caught many by surprise. When the league planned to play a full 72 game season that wouldn't conclude until June the 6 it was even more of a surprise. It was a given from the get go teams would have to be both flexible and adaptable. One team Fort Wayne decided to start playing in February and 12 teams opted out of the 2020-21 season.
- It is now five weeks into the season, the NHL has started playing with a reduced 56 game schedule and will start their playoffs almost a month before the ECHL finishes the regular season. The AHL plans to begin on February 5 and some teams will play as few as 24 games. It is clear ECHL teams are adjusting each and every day and those that will be most successful will be the teams that can adapt to what is happening in the most unique ECHL season ever.
- Many AHL teams did not sign a lot of players in the off season waiting to see the impact of the pandemic. Others sent contracted players to the ECHL. Now AHL teams are scrambling to get ready for the start of the season. Just in the last five days there have been 27 ECHL players loaned or recalled by AHL teams.
- In addition to the players being recalled and loaned to the ECHL teams have had to deal with COVID related issues which have been trending up. In the last week 30 players have been added to the Commissioner's Exempt List (CEL). Since December 11 a total of 80 players have been on the CEL. Eight teams (Allen, Indy, Jacksonville, South Carolina, Tulsa, Utah, Wheeling) have had games postponed.
- With all of these changes it creates so much extra work for coaches, general managers, trainers and front office staffs. Those most flexible and adaptable will be most successful.
- Allen's power play has a goal in five of their last six games after going 2-18 (11%) to start the season. Joe Garreffa got a lot of power play ice time and leads the Americans in power play points with five (2G, 3A). Jake McGrew, who along with Garreffa just got recalled by San Jose had a power play goal. Allen has seven power play goals on the season, McGrew and Garreffa have three (43%) of them. The Americans have so many great power play guys starting with Tyler Sheehy who had 20 power play points last season (5G, 15A) and leads the team in power play assists this season with four. Several guys will get more power play ice time to see if Allen can keep improving.
- I have had a couple of questions about the scrimmage last weekend where the Allen players from the Western Hockey League (WHL) played everyone else (the World). I asked team captain Spencer Asuchak, a WHL alum about the scrimmage. Spencer said, "It wasn't pretty for the WHL but when there is no hitting it is usually beneficial for the guys from the other leagues! haha"
- Here is the ECHL Weekly which provides information on all teams with their schedule for the week: https://www.echl.com/en/news/2021/1/echl-weekly-jan-18
DID YOU KNOW: The best power play in franchise history for the Americans and it isn't even close didn't happen in one of the Americans four championship seasons. The best power play was in 2016-17 when Allen had a power play percentage of 24.4% and scored 71 power play goals, which was 25% of their total goals. The team was led by Chad Costello who had 49 power play points (9G, 40A) and defenseman David Makowski who had 32 power play points (8G, 24A).
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