Jump to content
The Official Site of the Vancouver Canucks
Canucks Community

[Report] Bobby Ryan to take part in the NHL/NHLPA player assistance program, will be away from the Senators indefinitely

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Down by the River said:

All the best to the guy. He made an amazing life for himself after a really tough childhood.

 

https://www.sportsnet.ca/magazine/searching-for-bobby-ryan/

I always forget about this. It's insane what he's been through, if only more of the fans who dump on him knew. 

 

Here's hoping he can get things figured out. 

Edited by Coconuts
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, VIC_CITY said:

Is the player assistance program the same as the substance abuse program? 

The player assistance program was started in 1996 jointly by the league and the union and is funded by both parties. It's a confidential program that provides playersand their families with assistance with mental health, substance abuse and other matters.

 

The worldwide googleizer is your friend,copy and pasted for you

Edited by Cromeslab
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Cromeslab said:

The player assistance program was started in 1996 jointly by the league and the union and is funded by both parties. It's a confidential program that provides playersand their families with assistance with mental health, substance abuse and other matters.

 

The worldwide googleizer is your friend,copy and pasted for you

Fair enough.

 

Are you also going to make me google if the substance abuse/behavioural health program is now defunct or can we just hire you as head of CDC HR now :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Canuck Surfer said:

I am going to be the bad guy here.  But is anyone surprised that substance abuse might have been behind his collapse as a player?

 

I do echo others, hoping he gets recovery.  

 

His role was changed under Boucher.  He had 56pts / 22 goals the season before Boucher got hired but then only 25pts.  He talked about that in the Player's Tribune in May 2017 when the Senators went to the conference finals.

 

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/bobby-ryan-senators-playoffs-why-not-us

 

He starts the article by talking of how that season he had to stop going grocery shopping - too stressful with fans at the store offering him advice for his lack of scoring.  Excerpt:

Quote

[...]

 

Yes, I know I didn’t score as many goals this season as I have in the past. Yes, I’ve gone stretches where, if you looked at a score sheet, you probably would have had a hard time telling I’d been on the ice at all. I get it. Sometimes, I was frustrated too. But whenever I got down this year I just had to remind myself that this was by design.

 

Before training camp started last September, I sat down with Coach Boucher and for about two hours we talked hockey. Some of it was specific to our team, but much of it was a broader discussion about hockey philosophy. What makes a good team tick? What causes a talented roster to fail? How do you construct a consistently good power play? 

 

He told me that if our team was going to succeed, we needed reliable “net guys.” For his system to work, he needed players who could do the dirty work in front of the goalie and behind the net in order to set up chances. I agreed with it, but didn’t realize he was implying that he wanted me to step into that role. Once training camp began and he started putting me in those situations, it became clear that I was going to need to alter my game pretty drastically.

 

That wasn’t easy for me to do. For most of my life, I’ve been asked to make plays by floating to the outside and putting pucks on net. Suddenly I was being asked to be more physical and screen goalies to help set up chances for other guys.

 

That meant fewer scoring opportunities for myself, which, for most of my career — and according to people at the grocery store — me not scoring has meant failure. There were stretches this year where I’d be doing everything the team asked of me, and doing it fairly well, but I wouldn’t show up on the score sheet for four or five games at a time. At one point, I went 16 games without a goal, which felt awful. 

 

But I stuck with it, because I knew that I was part of something more. I had seen what this team was like when I was a sniper and honestly, it wasn’t bad… but it also wasn’t great. In that first meeting, Coach told me that things were going to change around here, and that if I was willing to buy into it — to truly buy in and change the way I played the game — the results would come.

 

And now, here we are.

 

[...]

 

Edited by mll
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/20/2019 at 6:10 PM, Coconuts said:

I always forget about this. It's insane what he's been through, if only more of the fans who dump on him knew. 

 

Here's hoping he can get things figured out. 

I think it's probably the case with lots players who struggle. Not saying everyone has struggles this deep, but we don't know what's going on in people's lives and these guys are only human. Vey is a great example of this. Lots of people on CDC were crapping all over the guy because he wasn't performing as well as he could've, but after he left Vancouver the news came out that his family situation was messed up. 

Edited by Fan since 82
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...