Ryan Bounces Back

Ryan's backhander lifted the Senators over the Penguins in Game 1, giving them the lead in the series.

OTTAWA, APRIL 12. Bobby Ryan was just coming off of a 2016-17 season where he finished with a disappointing 25 points, with 13 goals and 12 assists. Last year, he finished with 56 points, 22 goals and 34 assists. Those were the kinds of totals he was used to putting up, and this year was well below average by his standards. Before the season began, his mother died of liver cancer. He published a moving article on the Player's Tribune addressed to his mother. It can be found here. Instead of letting the past affect him, he decided on a fresh start in the playoffs.

So far, so good.

Ryan has put up 11 points during the playoffs so far, including three game-winning goals. His new focus helped him immediately, as he scored the first goal of the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the second period of the first-round series against the Boston Bruins. He then went on to score the overtime game-winner in Game 3 against the Bruins. Ryan scored two more goals from that game until Game 1 against Pittsburgh. Ryan gave a nice backhand pass to J.G. Pageau, who has had a great playoffs so far as well, who buried it to give the Senators the 1-0 lead. The Penguins had played a sloppy game and the lead held up until late in the third, where Evgeni Malkin, the playoffs point leader, scored to even the game. In overtime, Ryan hustled across his own blue line and beat the Penguins defenseman in a footrace to roof a backhander over goaltender Marc-Andre Fluery to win the game. After the game, Senators coach Guy Boucher said that "We've seen perfect stretches of Bobby the whole year...this is just the finishing part where it's paying off." Brian Burke, the man who drafted Ryan in 2005 with the Anaheim Ducks, said that "when you add the intensity we were all hoping for when he turned pro-and he has brought that now- this is the package the Anaheim Ducks thought they were drafting.

Boucher's new system of coaching had not agreed with Ryan for the first 81 games of the regular season. In the 82nd game, it all clicked. Ryan scored, and it took off from there. The fresh start approach has worked. Ryan said in an interview, "Now, I'm getting to, I guess, redeem myself a little bit. That's all I'm trying to do.
Keep doing it.

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