BOISE — Throughout his professional hockey career, Matt Register has been no stranger to deep playoff runs, no matter where he has been.

On Saturday, when the Idaho Steelheads drop the puck on the Kelly Cup Finals against the Florida Everblades, the veteran ECHL defenseman will mark his fifth trip to the championship series with his fourth team. Should Idaho win the best-of-seven series, he will become the first person in league history to win four Kelly Cup championships.

“It’s an exciting time and there’s four more wins, but it’s the hardest four wins to get,” said Register. “I’m telling (the team) to enjoy the next two weeks here, have fun with it and enjoy it. Hopefully the end result is us lifting that trophy.”

While the Everblades, the defending Kelly Cup Champions, have nine players with a Kelly Cup title on their resume, Register is the only Steelheads player to have ever appeared in the finals. He did so four straight seasons, with the Allen Americans in 2016, the Colorado Eagles in ‘17-’18 and the Toledo Walleye in ‘19. He was on the winning side in 2016, ‘17 and ‘18.

Register’s postseason success isn’t limited to North America, either. He spent last season playing in Wales, where he helped lead the Cardiff Devils to the British Elite Ice Hockey League playoff championship last season.

“I’ve played with a lot of good players, organizations and coaching staffs and at the end of the day it’s just been some luck for me,” said Register. “I didn’t get to my first finals until four or five years into my career. It’s a privilege to be here and I look forward to playing in another one.”

Only two other players on the Steelheads’ roster have won a championship as professionals at any level. Zach Walker won the President’s Cup with the SPHL Pensacola Ice Flyers in 2021 and Wade Murphy helped HK Olimpija win a Slovenian Hockey League title last season.

But when it comes to championship experience as a pro, there’s not many who have more than Register. Not on the Steelheads and not in the 35-year history of the ECHL. Register holds the ECHL’s career playoff games played record, with 142 and counting.

“We got a lot of young guys in that dressing room that maybe don’t know how special of an opportunity this is that we have,” said teammate Owen Headrick. “Not everyone has a historic career like Matt Register and get to play in the Kelly Cup Finals so many times. Most guys will get this chance once, maybe twice, throughout their career. So having somebody with Register’s experience back there helps us on the defense and helps the whole team. He’s got some good words of wisdom.”

Despite the fact that he’s been with so many different teams over the course of the last decade, referring to Register as a journeyman wouldn’t be fair to him. He’s been a key contributor in every championship run, even being named the Kelly Cup Playoffs MVP with Colorado in 2018.

On top of that, he’s been named to the All-ECHL team seven times in his career, including a first-team selection this season, and has been named ECHL Defensive Player of the Year three times. He holds the ECHL record for postseason assists, with 84 and is second in league history for postseason points with 110, seven points shy of the record.

This season, his first with the Steelheads, Register finished tied with teammate Cody Haiskanen for the best plus/minus rating in the league, at +53. It was the second-best plus/minus rating in league history. Despite missing five games to injury in the first and second rounds, Register is still third on the team in assists this postseason, with 10.

“It’s huge to have that piece,” said Steelheads coach Everett Sheen, who played with Register with the Ontario Reign from 2013-15, coming within one win of another Kelly Cup Finals appearance in 2015. “It’s his fifth time getting here and it’s just valuable insight. He knows what it takes to win each and every game, he’s a loud voice on the bench, especially when we have a lead. He’s making sure everybody’s playing the right way and really doing what it takes to close out the game.”

According to the ECHL, Register is one of six people to have his name engraved on the Kelly Cup three times, and the only one to have it engraved for three straight years. Only three of the six, Register, Riley Gill and Scott Burt — who won two Kelly Cups with Idaho in 2004 and ‘07 and a third with the Alaska Aces in 2011 — have won all three of their championships as a player.

Only three teams have won the Kelly Cup — or its predecessor, the Riley Cup — three times. This season, either Idaho or Florida will join the South Carolina Stingrays, the now-defunct Hampton Road Admirals or the Alaska Aces, who ceased operations in 2017 and moved to Maine in 2018. If it’s Florida that picks up its third Cup, Kyle Neuber will join the list of players to have won three championships. Neuber, who hasn’t played since Game 2 of Florida’s first-round series against South Carolina, won with the Everblades last year and was a teammate of Register’s in Allen when the Americans won in 2016.

But if Idaho gets its third Kelly Cup, Register will become the first person to win it four times in any capacity, surpassing every other team in ECHL history.

“It would mean a lot to me on a personal level,” Register said. “But I wouldn’t be here without these guys that I’m playing with today and this year. Just for me, I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. We’re going to chip away one game at a time and hopefully I get my fourth one.”