Ryan had monster playoffs what, 16 months ago? He has proved over the years that he is very capable of playing great hockey but what has been hard for him is to be able to do it for 82 games. It's a very long schedule and with age and injuries, it becomes harder as he might not have the greatest endurance to begin with. People talk like if players were robots but somebody out of shape probably wouldn't even last one period in the NHL.
That being said, people still expect him to be a powerforward goal scorer, which he is absolutely not. He was scoring lot of goals before because of his elite talent and also because he was playing with great players. He also had a much better shot younger (before injuries) but in the end he is a finesse playmaker. Even when he is out there trying to score a goal, it will be with finesse.
See on that video (I'm sure a lot of the haters didn't even notice), Ryan drives the net for a tic tac toe but the Tierney pass gets intercepted, then Ryan has the quickness of mind with the soft hands to put a stick on that with a defender on his back, but unfortunately Pickard followed through.
It's funny that people will be wondering if he is a 4 M$ player, yet his PPG in his 2 worst seasons is similar or even better than a lot of forwards making good coin
NHL.com - Stats
I think he was pretty good last night.
Still overpaid and we need him to be better but he was more involved than he had been in the previous three games. He looked solid on the left point on that first PP.
I don't understand how people can endlessly rail on him and fail to see that he isn't a net negative. Well except FQL who feels the need to bring in politics whenever Ryan is brought up.
It'd be smart to take anything you read on HF (and on the internet for that matter) with a gigantic grain of salt. You'd have to be pretty naive to not be able to identify the opinions driven by biased hate. Personally, that's what I analyze first and then I just discredit these posts like if nothing was said. I am more interested in facts and evidence like the stuff I posted in the Flyers GDT (see post #942 for example :
https://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/150574225/)
While he hasn't had the best season start possible, everything suggests that it's clearly not as bad as some
people are trying to paint.
What is extremely funny though, is that those people who constantly bash Ryan are the same that would have told you that the Tkachuk pick was garbage, even though he plays exactly the way that they would need Ryan to play to leave him alone. They just never stop and it's ridicularious.