For many in the hockey world, news of the ECHL’s “split-season schedule” format came as a bit of a shock.

Not Erik Bradford, however.

The Brampton Beast centerman serves as the team’s player representative in dealing with the Professional Hockey Players Association (PHPA), and played a key part in the discussions and negotiations to make it a reality.

“We voted for the staggered start, and I just felt like it was probably the best way to maximize the amount of jobs and teams that we could keep in the league with this pandemic,” Bradford told FloHockey. “I’m biased towards it, because playing for a Canadian team, the borders aren’t open right now, so we wouldn’t have been able to start in December. Starting in January allows us a little bit more time to hopefully open things up, and we can get back to some normalcy and start playing some hockey.”

Whether that can become a reality remains to be seen, of course. Set to enter his sixth full professional season and fourth as a member of the Beast, the 26-year-old Ontario native knows that while the league’s recent joint announcement with the PHPA bought his team some time, he has no idea if it’ll actually be enough.

“Doubts do start to creep in, and you worry about that stuff, but at the end of the day, you have to just wait and have some faith that things will work for all of us,” he said.

Off the ice, Bradford’s status as the team’s player rep gave him a unique, inside perspective into some of the challenges that are being faced to get the puck back onto the ice.

“I was almost thrown into it, really,” he explained. “Our rep, Jordan Henry, retired this past summer, so we needed a guy. He reached out to me, and it was definitely overwhelming the first call that I was on, I didn’t realize how much work goes on behind the scenes for reps and the work that the PHPA does for us players. It’s a lot more complicated of a process than I would have thought that goes into it — so much planning and so much work. The (split-season) announcement is a step in the right direction and is progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to get back to playing fully.”

Whenever that does happen, the All-Star forward is excited to get a chance to build off of the momentum he has from an excellent 2019-20 season, one in which he potted a career-high 18 goals despite the year being suddenly stopped short and had helped lead Brampton to a likely playoff berth.

Not bad for a guy who missed half of the prior season due to reconstructive ACL surgery.

“The way it all ended was really frustrating, especially for personally having missed the playoffs the year before with the knee surgery,” Bradford said. “I was really looking forward to getting back to the playoffs, and I felt like I could have made a difference the year before. It was tough, and I’m sure it was tough on every team, but we were really starting to trend in the right direction and play the right way as a team. Those are the teams that usually have a chance to win, those teams that get hot down the stretch heading into the playoffs – you see it in the NHL, you see it in any league – so I think it was frustration in that respect, that we were really catching on before things got shut down.”

Instead, the group will simply have to repeat the process, but that now includes a completely healthy Bradford, who says he wasn’t surprised by the way he was able to bounce back last year for a campaign that ended with an impressive 18-33—53 stat line in just 54 games.

“I worked really hard, but it was really tough on me mentally,” he said. “I broke my femur in the OHL, and that was tough too, but this was definitely the toughest thing I’ve had to deal with in my pro career. I was playing really well the year before, and was hoping to get a call-up to the next level. That injury set me back completely. This past year, it was all about getting my body right and trying to get back and play. I wasn’t surprised (by a strong year), I believe in myself and my abilities. The biggest thing was to just relax and realize the situation I was in. My role sort of changed from the previous year, and it was more being a good teammate, being a leader and realizing that I wanted to be the best player in that new reality that I could be.”

Mike Ashmore has 17 years of experience covering professional and college sports. You can follow him on all social media channels at @mashmore98.