He\u2019s only a few months into it, but so far, Derek Ryan is hitting the familiar markers of retirement.<\/p>\n
He cooks. He spends more time with his family. He goes to the gym.<\/p>\n
He would snowboard more, if only there were more snow.<\/p>\n
Basically, Ryan is doing the sorts of things that many 39-year-old dads do, even if he\u2019s doing them at the conclusion of a 10-year career in the National Hockey League \u2013 something that not so many 39-year-olds can say that they\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n
And on Saturday night, he\u2019ll add one more superlative to his hockey career, when the Spokane Braves retire Ryan\u2019s jersey during a pregame ceremony before the 7 p.m. puck drop at Eagles Ice Arena. Ryan\u2019s No. 10 will be the first retired by the franchise, which competes in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a reminder of my career and how far I was able to go from these days with the Braves to every step of the journey,\u201d Ryan said Thursday by phone from his home in the Spokane area. \u201cPretty remarkable for a skinny kid from Spokane, Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan\u2019s journey to and through professional hockey was a lengthy one. It started with the Braves, for whom he played as a teenager from 2002 to 2004. He then joined the WHL\u2019s Spokane Chiefs for three full seasons before embarking on a college career at the University of Alberta.<\/p>\n
Then he was on to a professional career that began with four years in Europe and included seasons with the Carolina Hurricanes, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. He played 606 NHL games in all, second only to Tyler Johnson (747) among Spokane natives.<\/p>\n
After all that time living away from Spokane, Ryan said one of the great joys of retirement is settling back in the city he and his wife call home.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Bonnie and I, we\u2019ve been gone for so long and lived so many places \u2013 in Alberta, the Carolinas, all over Europe \u2013 that we\u2019re in a stage of life where we\u2019re aware of what Spokane is and what Spokane isn\u2019t,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cWe love it for all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Braves first contacted Ryan about retiring his number late last summer, and the trickiest part of it was finding a date that worked with Ryan\u2019s coaching schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m coaching my son\u2019s team, and we\u2019re gone darn near every weekend,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
Coaching Zane, his son, has allowed Ryan to revisit hockey rinks that he played in himself when he was about the same age. It was just six years ago that the Ryan family built the house they now live in, though this is the longest stretch they have actually lived in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething that my family and I were looking forward to when I was done playing was coming home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Once he reached the NHL in 2015-16, when he made his debut with the Hurricanes, Ryan built a career as a smart centerman who could win faceoffs and play sound defensively. He finished with 82 goals and 127 assists in the regular season while adding another three goals and seven assists in 60 career playoff games.<\/p>\n
He appeared in 36 games for the Edmonton Oilers in 2024-25, was waived that January and played 13 games after that in the AHL with the Bakersfield Condors.<\/p>\n
Some people told him that he could have probably played for another team, Ryan said, but he didn\u2019t want to uproot his family to make that happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce my time in Edmonton was up \u2026 I was at peace with that,\u201d he said. \u201cI was ready to turn the page.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was ready, he said, to give his children the opportunity to make memories of their own in Spokane.<\/p>\n
Coaching keeps him busy, and he has taken on the side gig of breaking down video for some pro hockey players. He would like to snowboard more \u2013 something he wasn\u2019t able to do during his playing career \u2013 but poor conditions have limited him to just one day at Lookout Pass.<\/p>\n
But the jersey retirement is just another indicator to Ryan of how lucky he has been, one more thing he\u2019s happy he gets to be around for.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to spring,\u201d he said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had a spring in Spokane in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s only a few months into it, but so far, Derek Ryan is hitting the familiar markers of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-492065","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\/492065","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=492065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}