When Tye Felhaber took to the ice Monday night to make his NHL debut, it felt as if there was a collective applause from the entire Double-A level of hockey.

A former ECHL player ascending to the NHL isn’t uncommon – Felhaber was the 755th former ECHL player to make it to the NHL – but he represented something a little more on the rare side as a player whose potential seemed to have been overlooked by the scouts.

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I assure you, there are more Felhabers in the American Hockey League and the ECHL, and they just haven’t gotten their shot yet.

Unlike Sebastian Cossa, the goaltender who made his debut with the Detroit Red Wings on Dec. 9, Felhaber was never considered a surefire NHL prospect. He was a late bloomer in juniors, not drafted by an NHL team and toiled in the minors for over five years before finally signing a two-year deal with the Colorado Avalanche last weekend.

Felhaber’s debut with the Avalanche included only seven shifts, during which he accounted for one hit, as Colorado lost 3-1 to the host Vancouver Canucks. He’s got the tools – speed, vision and tenacity – that very well could make him a productive player with more NHL opportunities.

Take your lap, Tye 🎉#GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/A9gT97GwfB

— Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) December 17, 2024

"It was just so cool," Felhaber, 26, said of his debut on the Avalanche’s website. "(A) dream come true. Just being out there, (I) had a smile on my face."

Felhaber was a monster scorer in juniors with 90 goals and 179 points over 136 games his last two seasons with the Ontario Hockey League’s Ottawa 67’s between 2017 and 2019. His final season, he had 59 goals and 109 points in 68 games – and was plus-56 – and added 17 goals and 28 points in 18 postseason games.

While he saw plenty of AHL time, 89 games, in his first three seasons in the pros, he was relegated to more of a checking role.

That all changed in 2022-23, when he signed with the ECHL’s Fort Wayne Komets, immediately generating a reputation as a relentless player on the ice. He used his speed to chase pucks, sent opponents crashing into the boards and had a knack for scoring with ice time he hadn’t enjoyed since juniors.

He was a perfect example of a player who learned from the speed of the AHL, didn’t sulk because he was back in the ECHL, then used what he’d learned to eviscerate slower defenders and become reliable in his own end.

"My role is to produce offense,” he said early that season. “But at the same time, I want to generate energy, too, with the team by being hard on pucks and incorporating that into my game. The shots and the passes and all that stuff, that'll come, but I need to be helping the team in the defensive zone and bringing some energy on the forecheck.”

While Felhaber was still trying to make it back to the AHL, he said he embraced the pressure of carrying the Fort Wayne offense and the camaraderie of the ECHL, and he did sometimes have the sound of a player not sure he’d get another chance to get called up.

"I was lucky to have some great vets when I first started in pro and, you know, I want to help these guys because they really want to get better and they show it every day," Felhaber said in November 2022. "If I can be there to help, I'm always going to do that for these guys.”

Felhaber racked up huge stats with Fort Wayne – 14 goals and 63 points in 51 games – and he applied that when he was called up to the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals, totaling seven goals and 13 points in 21 games that season.

Felhaber returned to the Komets for the playoffs and had two goals and six points as they were upset in seven games by the Cincinnati Cyclones, but he hasn’t been back in the ECHL since. The Admirals, impressed with what they’d seen, signed Felhaber for the 2023-24 season and he had 10 goals and 23 points in 50 games, then an assist in four playoff games.

He landed this season with the AHL’s Colorado Eagles and accrued eight goals and 13 points in 23 games before getting called to the Avalanche.

“I’ve got two really good linemates and a really good support system there (with the Eagles),” Felhaber told Altitude TV on Monday night. “All the teammates are great, but Jayson Megna and Matthew Phillips, I’ve been on their line for a couple weeks now and it’s just great. If you get open, they’re going to find you.”

In ECHL circles, there was palpable joy over Felhaber making it to the NHL. He’d spent 269 games in the minor leagues before getting into an NHL regular-season game and won fans because he played hard and embraced his opportunities, even if they were skating three grueling games in three nights in three different cities in the ECHL, a league in which he was an all-star selection in 2023.

The ECHL is filled with players who can score, but not all of them have the patience, right attitude and are willing to put in the work to make the scouts notice them even if those scouts have seemed disinterested.

When you sit back and consider Felhaber’s skillset, you’ve got to wonder what other players in the ECHL could perhaps follow the same path. There are plenty in the league who already have AHL experience and would seem to have the tools, but they just need to fix some deficiencies in their games or simply catch a break.

Some names that come to mind are the Idaho Steelheads’ Hank Crone, the Toledo Walleye’s Trenton Bliss, Fort Wayne’s Jack Dugan, the Kansas City Mavericks’ Max Andreev, the Savannah Ghost Pirates’ Dennis Cesana, and the Florida Everblades’ Oliver Chau. To say nothing of the unbelievable stable of goalies in the ECHL such as Florida’s Cam Johnson, the Wheeling Nailers’ Sergei Murashov, the Mavericks’ Victor Ostman, the Iowa Heartlanders’ William Rousseau and the Jacksonville Icemen’s Matt Vernon.

This season, there have been three ECHL alumni to make their NHL debuts, including Trent Miner, the former Utah Grizzlies goalie who also played for the Avalanche, Cossa and Felhaber.

Of course, the ECHL is a developmental league. We should expect to see a healthy number of prospects begin their pro careers at this level, simply because they’re not seasoned enough to skate in the AHL, yet eventually make it to the NHL. That was the case for Cossa, a first-round pick of the Red Wings in 2021, who played for the Walleye in 2022-23 and made his NHL debut this month at 22.

But it’s OK to get a little more excited about the longtime grinders who claw their way to the NHL, such as Alex Belzile, who made it to the NHL in 2020 and has played 50 NHL games since with the Montreal Canadiens.

Felhaber is a similar sort of player.

"I started playing when I was 2, so (I've had) about 24 years of dreaming of this moment," Felhaber said Monday, per the Avalanche. "And (I'm) just so happy that my family and friends got to be here tonight."

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