For the seventh consecutive season, the Worcester Railers ended their regular season the same way: failing to make the ECHL’s Kelly Cup playoffs. Some years they were close, others not so close, but in the end, how close you are doesn’t matter; it’s only that you failed yet again.
Looking back over the last four seasons, which is when Jordan Smotherman took over for David Cunniff as head coach and general manager, no team in the ECHL’s North Division has given away more points than the Worcester Railers. We aren’t talking about the “trash points” we keep track of here on 210Sports, which are points Worcester probably should have gotten in games and didn’t. This is actual, provable math that shows the Railers have been the worst over the last four campaigns.
And they’re called “regulation wins”.
Worcester has just 100 regulation wins over their last 288 games. That means in 65.3% of the games the Railers play, their opponent has earned points in that game. Nearly two-thirds of the time Worcester takes the ice, they give away points that hurt their playoff chances. That’s not the .500 hockey the standings show, that’s 100% losing hockey.
This chart shows the six teams that have competed in the North Division over the last four seasons, ranked by the number of regulation wins they’ve earned. The teams listed under the last place Railers played in fewer seasons, but are included for comparison.
That last column is very telling. Just a handful more regulation wins and the Railers could have multiple playoff appearances. Worcester doesn’t need to be like Newfoundland and Wheeling, the only two teams on that list with Opponent’s Points Gained (OPG) lower than their regulation wins total; they only need to win in regulation a couple more times each season.
Unfortunately, the way the Railers have done things over the last few seasons has proven that what they’re doing isn’t enough to win those games. Every team in the North Division has overcome injuries and bad breaks to make the postseason, except for one: Worcester.
One big issue is that many of our players just aren’t good enough. I’m not talking about the top-line guys the Railers have signed, because most of them have panned out pretty well. I’m talking about the depth guys. Very few of them have become legitimate ECHL players. And none of them have been able to move up a level.
An easy trivia question: name the last Railers-signed player to become a full-time AHL player. It’s easy because there’s only been one in the franchise’s entire history: Drew Callin.
So the Railers haven’t made the playoffs, and they don’t develop players for the AHL. That’s not a great legacy.
People will argue that the Islanders organization didn’t help us enough, and they’d be right. But that doesn’t change the fact that many of the players under contract to Worcester either were not good enough for this league or, perhaps worse, were underutilized by the coaching staff.
In a salary cap league, judging talent is perhaps the most important thing in creating a successful team. And over the last four seasons, Worcester hasn’t been very good at that. They’ve also not been good at cutting underperforming players and replacing them with others.
The Railers had three forwards under contract this season who were consistently playing on the second and third lines that had goalless streaks of 16 games or more during the season. One of them went the final 43 games of the season without putting the puck in the net. At what point should a general manager start thinking “perhaps these guys aren’t working out”?
I’m guessing it’s a lot sooner than 43 games.
Simply put, the Railers need to put the puck in the opponent’s net and stop it from going into theirs more often. Looking back at the last four seasons, no North Division team has scored fewer goals, and Worcester has allowed the second most. If you erase Norfolk’s absolutely abysmal 2022-23 season, the Railers would be the worst in that stat, too.
Plus/minus rating, taken by itself, isn’t a great stat to show how poorly a team is doing because, for example, a team winning 3-1 on three power play goals and then giving up an extra attacker goal ends up with a minus-5 rating for the game. But when you’re over 200 points behind the next worst team over four seasons, and the only team in the division without a positive-rated season, that’s a very telling stat.
With a new affiliate joining the Worcester hockey family soon, now is a great time for a complete overhaul of how the Railers go about signing players, and the mindset of hockey operations in how those players are used. “Defense wins championships” sounds great, but without the offense to win games, teams don’t make the playoffs to begin with.
And if it’s business as usual in 2026-27, it will be another on the growing list of long springs and summers for Railers fans.
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