After spending his entire rookie year pro with the Hershey Bears, Ryan Hofer played with the ECHL\u2019s South Carolina Stingrays for a majority of the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n
Hofer, a Capitals\u2019 sixth-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, notched 26 points (12g, 14a) in 52 games for the ECHL\u2019s best regular-season team. And one of his 12 goals received a major end-of-season honor earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The ECHL named Hofer\u2019s March 12 tally against the Greenville Swamp Rabbits as the league\u2019s \u201cGoal of the Year\u201d for the 2024-25 season. <\/p>\n
The tally, Hofer\u2019s ninth of the season, came in the second period of the Stringrays\u2019 5-1 victory. A hustling Hofer forced a turnover as he was backchecking a Swamp Rabbits player. The two-way centerman then picked up the loose puck near the left circle, dangled the puck between his legs, and beat Swamp Rabbits goaltender Kolby Hay with a shot to the top of the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super grateful and honored to be chosen for ECHL Goal of the Year,\u201d Hofer said in an interview with the Stingrays<\/a>. \u201dI wasn\u2019t going out there looking for a goal of the year candidate, but being able to go out there and pull off a move like that in a game then be awarded for it is a really cool feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n Hofer will likely figure into Hershey\u2019s plans more-so in 2025-26 during the final year of his entry-level contract. The 6-foot-4, 189-pound forward could end up in one of Hershey\u2019s bottom-six center spots after veteran centermen Mike Sgarbossa<\/a> and Riley Sutter left the organization<\/a> and are going overseas next season.<\/p>\n During his two years in the Capitals\u2019 organization, Hofer has posted eight points (4g, 4a) in 45 games with the Hershey Bears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending his entire rookie year pro with the Hershey Bears, Ryan Hofer played with the ECHL\u2019s South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-22925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}