The coming Kontinental Hockey League season will be unlike any previous campaign for Duncan’s Matt Ellison.
Not only because he is moving from Dinamo Minsk, where he spent the last three seasons, to perennial Gagarin Cup contender Metallurg Magnitogorsk, but also because it will be his first year alone in Europe.
Until this year, Ellison’s wife, Kaleena, and their three daughters, who are now five, almost four and almost two, have stayed with him throughout the KHL season. This time, with the eldest about to start kindergarten, the rest of the family is staying in Canada.
“It’s not ideal being so far from home and picking my family up and moving all around,” Ellison noted shortly before he left Duncan for another season overseas, and the day before it was announced that he will be inducted into the North Cowichan/Duncan Sports Wall of Fame this fall. “This year will be challenging with my family staying home. We’ll see how that goes.”
Training camp for Ellison’s new club starts on July 6 this year, with a week in Magnitogorsk, a couple of weeks in Germany, and exhibition tournaments first in Sochi, then back in Magnitogorsk. The regular season starts on Aug. 21, beginning so early in part because the league is taking a month off for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
With the NHL insisting that it will not give its players a chance to play in the Olympics this year, it appears that Canada will be icing a crew of Canadian players who skate in Europe, and, as one of the KHL’s top Canucks, Ellison’s name has frequently come up as a possibility. He hasn’t heard anything from Hockey Canada yet, but he would jump at the chance if it came.
“It would be a pretty amazing experience,” said Ellison, who suited up for Canada at the 2015 Spengler Cup tournament, winning a gold medal. “Obviously it’s in the back of my mind, but I can’t focus on it too much. Until you hear something, you’ve just got to go out and play your best and stay on the radar. It would be a pretty amazing opportunity if the chance came.”
Ellison sits seventh in all-time KHL scoring with 334 points, eighth in all-time goals with 139, and eighth in all-time assists with 195. Because Kevin Dallman, who was born in Ontario, opted to become a citizen of Kazakhstan, Ellison is now the top Canadian in all offensive categories.
Dallman’s decision isn’t unique, as several longtime KHLers from Canada and the U.S. have become citizens of countries like Kazakhstan or Belarus in order to play for their national teams, something Ellison has never considered, even though he spent the last three seasons playing in Belarus.
“It never even crossed my mind,” he asserted. “I’m Canadian; that’s the way I look at it. If I did do that, it wouldn’t be the same sense of pride to play for that country.”
Ellison decided to leave Minsk this year for Magnitogorsk after three years of postseason disappointment. Dinamo Minsk made the playoffs twice in the three years he played there, but lost in the first round both times. Magnitogorsk, meanwhile, has won two of the last four championships and been to three of the last four Gagarin Cup finals.
“They’re a good team, and a lot of the same core guys are still there,” Ellison related. “It should be a good chance to have another chance to have another solid season and hopefully have some playoff success.”
Notable names in Magnitogorsk include Sergei Moyazkin, the KHL’s all-time leading scorer with 284 goals and 597 points in 487 games, Czech national team star Jan Kovar, Ilya Samsonov, Russia’s goalie at the last World Junior Championships and the Washington Capitals’ first-round draft pick in 2015, and Oskar Osala, a big Finnish winger who played three NHL games between the Washington Capitals and Carolina Hurricanes between 2008 and 2010. Ellison just wants to slide in and help the team continue its recent surge.
“The core has been there a while,” he said. “I’m hoping I can go in and do what I can to help the team just a bit more, not put too much pressure on myself, be a support player.”