Bobby Ryan Emerges From Darkness For A Signature Hockey Moment.
“No one remembers number two.” Those words were uttered in 1993 by Alexandre Daigle, drafted first overall by the Ottawa Senators and considered a surefire future star in the NHL. Those words are no infamous among hockey fans for how wrong of a prediction they turned out to be, with Daigle becoming arguably the greatest NHL draft bust of all time, and the man picked right after him, Chris Pronger, going on to a Hall of Fame career.
However, when it comes to current Ottawa Senator Bobby Ryan, Daigle’s words would prove to be prophetic. Drafted at second overall in 2005, Ryan was instantly an afterthought compared to the man taken above him. Sidney Crosby was pegged for superstardom even as a junior, and Ryan, although a highly regarded prospect by normal standards, became an afterthought compared to the otherworldly hype generated by “The Next One,” believed even then to have a chance at being the best hockey had seen since Wayne Gretzky. Ryan has struggled to escape that shadow throughout his career, and throughout his life he has had to overcome darker issues off the ice as well.
Despite being overshadowed by Crosby in the draft, Ryan would be far from the kind of bust that Alexandre Daigle was. Ryan performed well upon joining the Anaheim Ducks, scoring more than thirty goals in each of his first four full seasons. And yet, he was destined to be overshadowed again, this time by the two Ducks he shared a line with during much of his time in Orange County. It would be Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf who would emerge as the faces of the Anaheim franchise, with Ryan neither as prolific a scorer as Perry (who would lead the NHL with a 50 goal season in 2010–11 and win the Hart Trophy for MVP) nor as creative of a playmaker as Getzlaf, who scored fewer goals than Ryan but continually posted more total points due to racking up assists left and right.
Anaheim showed how much they viewed Perry and Getzlaf as invaluable by locking them up to big-money, long term contract extensions, while Ryan was viewed as more of a complementary piece; an asset to the team to be sure, but ultimately expendable, especially since signing him to a big contract of his own would be difficult for Anaheim under the NHL’s hard salary cap system. The Ducks traded Ryan in 2013 to the Ottawa Senators, who did subsequently give him his own big contract: $51 million for a total term of seven years.
Ryan had earned a star’s payday, but unfortunately his production dipped upon his arrival in Ottawa. In none of his seasons as a Senator did he score thirty goals as he did in Anaheim, although he did perform well in the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs, helping Anaheim reach the Eastern Conference finals, where they lost in a heartbreaking seven game series to none other than Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins. In the following years, Ryan’s numbers dropped even further, as injuries and his personal issues began to take a toll on his ability to stay on the ice.
Ryan had had demons to conquer from a very early age. A 2014 article for Sportsnet detailed his troubled childhood; Ryan’s father was arrested for a vicious attack on Ryan’s mother Melody, then skipped bail and dragged his wife and young son along with him into life as a fugitive until he was finally caught by U.S. Marshals in 2000. Bobby was thirteen years old at the time. Given all of this, it is a minor miracle that Ryan even made it to the NHL, but his struggles would not be over once he reached adulthood.
Melody had been the rock of Bobby’s upbringing, and her death from cancer in 2016 hit him incredibly hard, as he detailed in an emotional open letter in the Players’ Tribune. Struggles with alcohol would begin to mount in the years to come, reaching a head during this past season. In November of 2019, Ryan checked himself into the NHL Players’ Association’s rehab facility, and would not emerge for over two months. His performance had been on a downward trajectory for so long that it was an open question whether he would ever be able to re-establish himself as belonging in the NHL.
As it turned out, however, the story of Ryan’s career would have yet another act to it. Newly clean and sober, the rebuilding Senators needed him, if nothing else other than to fill out a roster that the team had gutted at the 2020 trade deadline, trading away established players like Jean-Gabriel Pageau to stockpile draft picks for the future. And so it was that on February 27, 2020 Ryan took to the ice again.
What happened next would have been dismissed as too saccharine and cheesy if it were written as the end to a Hollywood screenplay. For at least one night, Ryan was back to peak scoring form, netting a hat trick as the Senators dispatched the Vancouver Canucks 5–2. The crowd burst into chants of “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!” as their erstwhile star gave them cause to celebrate during what has been a tough season for Ottawa fans.
Bobby Ryan will never come close to the achievements of Sidney Crosby, and at thirty-two years old, will likely never return to being the top scorer he was in Anaheim. But with his hat trick performance, he proved that he can still show flashes of greatness on the ice. Furthermore, he can still provide the veteran mentorship that the promising next generation of young Senators players like Brady Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot and company need in order to develop into a Stanley Cup caliber core. Ryan showed that he had overcome his demons, and provided a moment of hope for one of North American sports’ most long-suffering fanbases. For just one night, Bobby Ryan was at last at center stage.
