The writing has been on the wall for awhile, leading to the sad but not unexpected news from Edmonton Oilers on Sunday that the club has waived veteran forward Derek Ryan.
Depth d-man Josh Brown has been returned to the AHL, though further waivers were not required since he has not met either threshold (10 NHL GP, 30 days on the roster) since clearing waivers at the end of training camp. He’ll report directly to Bakersfield, while Ryan will have to wait 24 hours to find out his next destination, which could be in the NHL if he gets claimed.
If this is indeed the end of Ryan’s NHL journey, it’s a lot longer book than anybody could have anticipated. He penned an extraordinary story as one of the game’s truly late bloomers.
The native of Spokane made his hometown team, the Chiefs of the WHL, in his 18-year-old year and played through his over-age season, being passed over in the NHL Draft each June. After a brief pro trial in the old UHL, he moved on to play Canadian University hockey right here in Good Old Ourtown, playing a full four years with the University of Alberta Golden Bears, improving his point production each year and winning a national title in 2008. Ryan was earned USPORTS First-Team All-Canadian honours in his final season.
After graduating UAlberta with a degree in human physiology, Ryan then moved on to Europe for another four seasons, the first three in the Austrian league before an impressive campaign in the Swedish Hockey League where he scored 60 points in 55 games.
At 28 he signed with Carolina Hurricanes and played a full season-plus with their AHL affiliate in Charlotte before making his NHL debut at the advanced age of 29.
Who could have foreseen that the undersized forward would go on to play nearly a full decade in the NHL? When he recently hit the 600-game plateau, he joined Pierre-Edouard Bellemare as the only modern player to do so after debuting at such an advanced age.
Ryan would play two seasons in Carolina, then three in Calgary before joining the Oilers as a free agent in the summer of 2021. He delivered the goods on the two-year at $1.25 million deal he signed that day, producing double-digit goals from down the line-up in each campaign, and was penned to a further two-year extension in 2023 for a cap hit of $900,000. At the time, many thought the extra year served the double purpose of lowering the deal’s average cap hit while providing the player some extra security at a one-way price. The cap hit was low enough that it could be entirely buried in the AHL should he no longer make the grade.
Indeed, as per Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic, this was part of the plan that was well-understood by the player the day that extension was signed.
The exceptional aspect of Derek Ryan’s track record was how he continued to improve as a hockey player well into his 30s. By the time he got to Edmonton at age 34, he was a useful bottom six player who could play centre or right wing with the additional virtues of being a splendid penalty killer and highly-adept faceoff man whose right-shot stick was particularly helpful at that discipline. To borrow from Craig MacTavish’s long-held take that “it’s not what you make, it’s what you leave”, Ryan had exceptional abilities for puck placement, often ending his shifts with the puck deep in opposing territory. He was valued by three different Oilers coaches as a man who could be trusted with important shifts and d-zone draws when the Oilers were protecting late leads.
A feisty player with the capacity to withstand a lot of punishment, he had a curmudgeonly side that flared occasionally in interactions with the media or with opponents deemed to have crossed the line. (Ask Nils Hoglander about that.)
Finally in 2024-25 there have been signs that the end was nigh. Ryan’s ice time was cut, he became an extra on the penalty kill, and started to sit out games on the regular. His last four games included the 600th of his career just before Christmas, another on his 38th birthday just after, and then a game in Seattle in his home state early in the new year. From this distance this was an extended show of respect from the organization even as his time wound down.
There’s been a changing of the guard has been unfolding in real time, with his heir apparent being another UAlberta grad, Noah Philp. A fellow right-shot centre, Philp is getting his own NHL baptism at the relatively advanced age of 26. After an early season cup of coffee, he was recalled again last week and has since been in the line-up every game while Ryan watched from the press box. With salary cap pressures being what they are, it was inevitable a move would be made, and that has now come at the end of the Oilers’ length road trip.
That this transition has occurred under the watchful eye of yet a third graduate of the storied Golden Bears program, Oilers head coach, Kris Knoblauch, adds further poignancy to the story. Three hockey lifers who beat long odds to make The Show.
No telling what happens next. Will Ryan be claimed on waivers? Possibly. Will he report to the AHL or hang around Edmonton as an extra? We’ll know soon. It says here that he has a future in coaching should he choose to go that way, so a transitional phase as a mentor extraordinaire in the high minors might prove useful to that end.
As the old saying goes, Father Time is undefeated. But Derek Ryan gave him one hell of a battle.
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