Retired NHL player Derek Ryan set to have Braves jersey retired: ‘Pretty remarkable for a skinny kid from Spokane’

He’s only a few months into it, but so far, Derek Ryan is hitting the familiar markers of retirement.

He cooks. He spends more time with his family. He goes to the gym.

He would snowboard more, if only there were more snow.

Basically, Ryan is doing the sorts of things that many 39-year-old dads do, even if he’s doing them at the conclusion of a 10-year career in the National Hockey League – something that not so many 39-year-olds can say that they’ve done.

And on Saturday night, he’ll add one more superlative to his hockey career, when the Spokane Braves retire Ryan’s jersey during a pregame ceremony before the 7 p.m. puck drop at Eagles Ice Arena. Ryan’s No. 10 will be the first retired by the franchise, which competes in the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League.

“It’s a reminder of my career and how far I was able to go from these days with the Braves to every step of the journey,” Ryan said Thursday by phone from his home in the Spokane area. “Pretty remarkable for a skinny kid from Spokane, Washington.”

Ryan’s journey to and through professional hockey was a lengthy one. It started with the Braves, for whom he played as a teenager from 2002 to 2004. He then joined the WHL’s Spokane Chiefs for three full seasons before embarking on a college career at the University of Alberta.

Then he was on to a professional career that began with four years in Europe and included seasons with the Carolina Hurricanes, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. He played 606 NHL games in all, second only to Tyler Johnson (747) among Spokane natives.

After all that time living away from Spokane, Ryan said one of the great joys of retirement is settling back in the city he and his wife call home.

“For Bonnie and I, we’ve been gone for so long and lived so many places – in Alberta, the Carolinas, all over Europe – that we’re in a stage of life where we’re aware of what Spokane is and what Spokane isn’t,” Ryan said. “We love it for all those things.”

The Braves first contacted Ryan about retiring his number late last summer, and the trickiest part of it was finding a date that worked with Ryan’s coaching schedule.

“I’m coaching my son’s team, and we’re gone darn near every weekend,” Ryan said.

Coaching Zane, his son, has allowed Ryan to revisit hockey rinks that he played in himself when he was about the same age. It was just six years ago that the Ryan family built the house they now live in, though this is the longest stretch they have actually lived in it.

“Something that my family and I were looking forward to when I was done playing was coming home,” he said.

Once he reached the NHL in 2015-16, when he made his debut with the Hurricanes, Ryan built a career as a smart centerman who could win faceoffs and play sound defensively. He finished with 82 goals and 127 assists in the regular season while adding another three goals and seven assists in 60 career playoff games.

He appeared in 36 games for the Edmonton Oilers in 2024-25, was waived that January and played 13 games after that in the AHL with the Bakersfield Condors.

Some people told him that he could have probably played for another team, Ryan said, but he didn’t want to uproot his family to make that happen.

“Once my time in Edmonton was up … I was at peace with that,” he said. “I was ready to turn the page.”

He was ready, he said, to give his children the opportunity to make memories of their own in Spokane.

Coaching keeps him busy, and he has taken on the side gig of breaking down video for some pro hockey players. He would like to snowboard more – something he wasn’t able to do during his playing career – but poor conditions have limited him to just one day at Lookout Pass.

But the jersey retirement is just another indicator to Ryan of how lucky he has been, one more thing he’s happy he gets to be around for.

“I’m really looking forward to spring,” he said. “We haven’t had a spring in Spokane in a long time.”