It’s difficult to recall a player who endured such devastating lows and awe-inspiring highs on and off the ice in a single year as Bobby Ryan did this season.
Before the 2016-17 campaign began, the now 30-year-old lost his beloved mother to cancer just six weeks after his first child was born. As is wonderfully documented by Ryan, himself, his mother, Melody, was everything and more to him.
And to make matters worse, the roughest offseason of his career slowly, but surely, dissolved into his worst regular season to date.
“I think I changed a little bit as a player and that was the given from Day 1, that I was going to have to,” Ryan explained on locker clean out day during the final availability of the season.