HERSHEY, Pa. — Ethen Frank was already on his way to a memorable rookie season with the Hershey Bears when he received a questionnaire from the American Hockey League. It asked Frank to rank the seven events he might want to participate in at the all-star skills challenge. He scanned it. The shooting challenges made him nervous and took too long, he thought to himself, so he listed the fastest skater event as his preference and sent the survey back.
When it came time to compete in the event in Quebec in February, Frank skated his lap as hard as he could. When he finished, he looked back at the clock on the ice: 12.915 seconds. No AHL or NHL player had ever bettered 13 seconds in the event, he was later told, and Frank was eventually summoned to the Hall of Fame in Toronto. He delivered the black Bauer skates he used — with “Franky” written just above the blades — to be put on display.
A few weeks after the milestone, Frank signed a two-way contract with the Washington Capitals for next season.
Frank arrived in Hershey at an opportune time: His 30-goal rookie season helped the Bears earn a Calder Cup playoff berth, and he positioned himself as an intriguing prospect for the Capitals, who have one of the NHL’s oldest rosters and are trying to retool their lineup with more speed and youth.
“The opportunities are probably going to arise sooner or later,” Frank said in an interview last month. “So as long as you keep your head down and work hard, I’m sure the chips will fall where they may.”
It has been a surreal year for Frank, who grew up in Papillion, Neb., a suburb of Omaha that isn’t a hockey hotbed. Frank was obsessed with the game from an early age — he had Fathead posters of Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby on his bedroom walls — but he largely learned to skate by playing roller hockey on asphalt.
“I give pretty much all of my credit to that and my dad for teaching me how to skate. I didn’t really do a whole lot being from Omaha. There’s not a ton of skating coaches or anything like that out there,” Frank said. “My dad always said, ‘Speed kills.’ ”
Frank honed that speed on a youth hockey team that traveled all over the Midwest to compete in tournaments. His coaches fought to get him and his teammates in front of scouts, which eventually landed Frank at Western Michigan University, where he played for five years after two seasons were shortened because of the coronavirus pandemic.
At 25, he’s older than most AHL rookies. There were stretches during his first year when the league’s grueling schedule — often featuring long bus trips and three games in three days — exhausted him. But he turned in one of the best rookie seasons in Hershey in recent years: Frank led the team in goals, power-play goals and shots. He closed the regular season with his first hat trick to push his total to 30 goals, the most by a Bears rookie since Craig Fisher scored a rookie franchise record 43 in 1990-91.
“He’s been taking positive strides throughout the whole season. The next step is to see how he performs in the playoffs. That’s the next area of growth,” Hershey Coach Todd Nelson said. “I wouldn’t say this is a surprise. We knew he had skill. But he’s taken it to the next level. I think there is a lot of positives in the future for him.”
The Capitals have a handful of young forwards they brought into the mix late in the season after the team was eliminated from playoff contention, including Beck Malenstyn, Joe Snively and Henrik Borgstrom. There are others who figure to be in the mix once training camp starts, including Connor McMichael, who was shuffled between his natural position of center and the wing during his stints with Washington over the past two seasons.
At 5-foot-10 and 178 pounds, Frank is an undersized forward who offers Washington dynamic speed and scoring ability. He’s expected to bring that to training camp before next season, where he’ll try to catch the eye of a new Capitals coach.
It isn’t new territory for Frank. He was always working to get noticed as a little-known prospect from Nebraska. In Hershey, he had to prove he could handle the rigors of professional hockey, which provided the stage for him to show off his speed during the all-star skills challenge, take a trip to the Hall of Fame and eventually earn an NHL contract.
“Pretty humbling signing that contract,” he said. “It’s kind of been a long ride. That’s always been the dream goal.”