For Bobby Ryan, Detroit has been a place of promise. It's been a place of panic and a place of peace, a place to lose himself and find himself. It's where his hockey career took off, where it nearly crashed altogether, and where Ryan hopes he can take it to old heights.
"It’s funny how Detroit seems to have played a role in my life for a long period of time," Ryan said Friday after signing a one-year deal with the Red Wings.
Ryan, 33, was born and raised in New Jersey. He's lived in Canada and in California. When he was 15, his father moved the family to the Detroit area so Ryan could play high-level midget hockey for HoneyBaked. One season with the team was enough to get him to the OHL.
Two years later, he'd be drafted second overall by the Anaheim Ducks.
Ryan made his NHL debut in 2007, scored 31 goals as a rookie the next year, and won a silver medal with Team USA at the Vancouver Olympics the year after that. He signed a $25+ million contract with the Ducks at the age of 23, then, following a trade to Ottawa, signed a $50+ million extension with the Senators at the age of 27.
He was living the life every young hockey player dreams of. And then he began living life a little too hard. Ryan, who has a deeply troubled family past and who lost his mother to cancer in the summer of 2016, fell into a battle with alcohol near the age of 30. It began to eat away at his career, and it took its toll on his wife and their two young children.
Ryan thought about checking himself into a clinic last summer. He soldiered into the season instead and managed one goal in his first 16 games. About a week before Thanksgiving, the Senators came to Detroit. It was here, during practice the day before a game against the Red Wings, that Ryan decided to get the help he needed. He left the ice and left the team, and wound up at a rehab center in California.
“I guess you can call it a panic attack, but it was more of a realization that the route that I was going had no good end in sight,” Ryan would tell reporters later. “And that’s not just professionally — that’s personally."
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Ryan spent more than three months in the clinic. He returned to the Senators in late February, sober and healthy, and scored a hat trick in his first game at home. He was awarded the 2019-20 Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.
So when Ryan signed on Friday with the Wings, one of his friends pointed out the symmetry with Detroit. His life both bottomed out and began anew in the city where he'll try to revive his career.
"It’s just amazing how my hockey career kind of started in Michigan with Detroit HoneyBaked and then going to the OHL from there, my personal life started to get better after I left (Detroit) to seek help," Ryan said. "And now I hope that it professionally gets better going back there to kind of reinvigorate myself and help this team get better and help myself get better on the ice."
Ryan means that last part. He knows he's not viewed as the All-Star he once was, and in some ways he knows he won't be that player again. He joked more than once on Friday about the step or two he's lost. But he also knows how he felt when he returned last season -- "like I had jump every night, like I had just re-found hockey and the joy for it," he said -- and he knows what he's capable of if that feeling lasts.
"I selfishly have dreams of getting back to the Bobby Ryan I was early-Ottawa, late-Anaheim days," Ryan said. "I know that’s a tall order, but those are the expectations I’m going to continue to set for myself."
If he's being honest, Ryan wanted to finish his career in Ottawa. The community supported him when he was gone, and showered him in love when he came back. He said he's 'deeply upset' to move on, with so much of his heart staying behind. But it feels like he landed in the next-best place, and maybe the place he was destined for all along.
Ideally, Ryan said, he'd like to stay in Detroit for a while -- which is only an option because he left when he did.