ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — “Starting in goal, wearing No. 1, welcome back Tuck-er Ty-nan!”
When Niagara IceDogs public address announcer Rod Mawhood introduced Tucker Tynan to the Meridian Centre crowd at Saturday night’s home opener, the 3,276 fans in attendance rose from their seats and cheered his name, crescendoing louder than they had for each of the names that preceded his.
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Tynan stepped out of the tunnel, raising his stick to salute them. Then he took his place on the blue line while his captains were introduced behind him, and he got back into a familiar, now no longer distant, routine. And when the anthems were done, he retreated to his home net for the first time in 667 days.
The moment — that welcome back — happened quickly. Almost as if Tynan, who is notoriously recluse, wanted it to be that way.
But he was back, and that was no small thing. Not to him. Not to his teammates, or the fans, or anyone else who was there, all those days ago, as he lay in a different crease in London and trainers rushed to save his life. And not to his mom, Ruth, back home in Chicago watching on TV, or any of the army of doctors and physical therapists who helped him get to back in the crease, a place he was told nearly 22 months earlier, when he came out of surgery at St. Catharines General Hospital, that he’d never return to. Not to general manager Joey Burke, high above the crowd. Not to head coach Billy Burke, nearby on the bench.
“It’s a nice moment for everybody to really applaud a young man who faced adversity that not a lot of people ever do and was able to get back up from it,” Billy said. “And on top of everything else, to have earned the starting job here after what he went through is an amazing accomplishment.”
Nobody who was there on Dec. 12, 2019, in London as Hunter Skinner crashed into Tynan, pushing him back into his net and slicing open his leg, will ever forget the scene.
Those quiet, fragile moments, as then-IceDogs athletic therapist Chris Trivieri (who has since been hired by the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks) sprinted to him, found the wound, applied pressure with towels to slow the pooling of blood and waited for his equipment manager, Nick Hornby, to bring him the tourniquet, are etched in all of their memories. The calming presence of veteran London Knights athletic therapist Doug Stacey. Teammate Adrien Beraldo, stepping in to help cut off his goalie’s equipment. Strength coach Nick Tamburri and referees Patrick Myers and Quincy Evans following direction and doing their part. All of it.
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But these days, Tynan tries not to think about it, choosing to block out the pain and the adrenaline that overcame him as the hockey world stopped around him. He’s been doing that for a long time now, too.
In the days, weeks, months and now years since, he has tried to do just two things: look forward and beat the odds.
That never made it any easier, as he relearned to walk and began the gruelling rehab process that eventually brought him back to Niagara after not one, but two surgeries (he had a second one in March 2020 when orthopedic surgeon Dr. Bradley Dunlap feared the muscles weren’t healing properly).
Though he beat every timeline doctors set out for him throughout his recovery, it was still painstaking and slow as he worked from being bedridden, to crutches, to a walking brace, to stretching, to twirls around the ice in player skates, and then eventually full goalie gear in sessions with his longtime goalie coach Oliver Freji, as he tried to rebuild strength in his weak leg and get comfortable again with the goalie mechanics that had previously been second nature to him.
“It was like, ‘When is this going to end?’” Ruth said of the process, which she added was made worse by the pandemic. “And after the second surgery, that made it more uncertain. It wasn’t easy, but he pushed and he pushed. It was a long journey. He worked so hard. Even though one day doctors told him he wasn’t going to play again, he didn’t believe it. It’s amazing. He believed in himself, he knew where he was, and as his mother, I could only try to support him with everything. I wasn’t in his situation or feeling his pain. I was feeling his pain in my own way, but I was not actually in his shoes. I’m just so proud of him.”
Throughout, he also did what he calls “mental training” work that kept him focussed on the future instead of wallowing in what was lost (which included, in all likelihood, getting picked in the 2020 NHL Draft).
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“I just kept moving forward. I just put my head down and went to work. I had to,” Tynan said on a phone call with The Athletic a day before his return to the Meridian Centre, crediting people like Freji, whom he calls “not just a coach but a friend and a companion,” for keeping him going.
Eventually, his persistence got him an invite late last season to practice and skate with the AHL’s Iowa Wild. Though he didn’t get into games with the Wild (something he says he “would have liked for it to turn out better”), that experience allowed him to build into the summer intent on making a full return to action for the 2021-2022 OHL season.
His first real game followed it at USA Hockey’s World Junior Summer Showcase in Plymouth, Mich., where he played just one period, stopping seven of nine shots against Team Sweden.
In Chicago, he also skated in a camp that Freji invited him to that included most of the area’s NHL players, including Blackhawks stars Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews.
“The biggest thing is just knowing confidence-wise that I’m there and I can compete at those levels. This summer gave me that confidence,” Tynan said. “So now I just have to put my head down, go to work and get back on top.”
When Tynan arrived in Niagara in August and got on the Meridian Centre ice for the first time since the injury, the Burkes were more nervous for it than he was.
“From Day 1 of training camp, it was in the front of our minds having him at that end of the rink,” Billy Burke said. “It’s something that I talked to him about to see if he had any reservations, and right away it was, ‘No, let’s go, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care what end of the rink I’m in, let’s play.’ He has done a great job of getting over any mental blocks, and then for us, from the coaches and the teammates who were there, it was just awesome to see him back. It was one of those bigger-than-sports, bigger-than-life moments.”
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Back home, Ruth gets anxious every time players crowd into her son’s crease.
“I get nervous, but I try to stay positive. That’s one thing I’ve learned from him,” said Ruth, who was disappointed not to be able to be in attendance Saturday due to border restrictions.
When Tynan took the net for his first preseason game back with the team Sept. 19 and the first player crashed into him, Joey Burke held his breath, too.
But Tynan just bounces right back up.
“I don’t have any hesitation. That play that happened is a normal play, it happens a few times a game. It’s going to happen more. It’s a physical game. You can’t be scared. You just have to play it how it is,” Tynan said.
So when he posted a shutout in that preseason debut, nobody was surprised.
They weren’t surprised a couple of weeks later when he stopped 25 of 26 shots (a .962 save percentage) in the IceDogs’ first game of the regular season, a 4-1 road win against the Barrie Colts.
“He’s an unbelievably strong guy mentally. You can see that he’s completely unfazed by returning to action. When the game pace picks up, it doesn’t bother him at all. He’s a funny guy that way where he’s so strong mentally that nothing bothers him. It’s not even something that he’s thinking about,” Joey Burke said.
“To go from two years ago when we’re in the hospital there and the doctor’s telling him he’ll never play again and might have issues running again, to him returning 22 months later in full form and fully healthy, and really right back to when he was his strongest, is really incredible. It has been such a long road for Tucker, and we couldn’t be happier to have him back. It almost looks from our end that he hasn’t missed a beat.”
They weren’t surprised Saturday when he stopped 32 of 34 shots (a .941 save percentage) in a 3-2 shootout win, including two breakaway saves on Bruins prospect Brett Harrison in overtime, and stops on four more shots in a six-round shootout.
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And they certainly weren’t surprised when he was named the game’s first star.
“We were hopeful that he would be back and be ready to be his old self. And then once we brought him on the ice, he exceeded even our wildest expectations,” Billy Burke added. “Not only is he back to where he was, but he appears to have taken a step. There is no hesitation, no hang-ups. His mental strength and commitment is really second to none, and he has really relied on that to help him get back to where he is now.”
To each of them, and to his teammates within the dressing room, Tynan’s an inspiration.
“The guys know the difficult road he has been on and the courage it takes to come back. They know that it doesn’t get much worse than it did for Tucker Tynan and here we are 22 months later, and he’s back to health and ready to go,” Joey said. “And then even more than that, having him in the net elevates us as a unit so much. We’ve got that confidence when he’s back there that nothing’s going to beat him and we can win any night. That’s something that we’ve been missing with him out due to the injury. So really, at all levels, he inspires these guys.”
The Burkes are also confident that Tynan’s return to the net will be followed by renewed NHL interest, whether for a contract or a selection as a re-entry player into the 2022 NHL Draft.
“We were all hopeful that someone would select him late in 2020 just based on the body of work and hoping that he would recover. But now that he has, with the role we expect him to play this year, there’s not a doubt in my mind that he’s going to play himself right back onto all of the NHL radars,” Joey Burke said. “We feel he has an NHL future in him still. I think he’s going to turn a lot of heads again this year, like he did two years ago.”
For Tynan, that’s what his comeback has to be all about. That’s what all of the pain and all of the hours have to be about.
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“It’s pretty special to get back into games and get another opportunity like this,” Tynan said. “In my opinion, I was one of the top goalies in the CHL, not just the OHL (before the injury). If you look at guys who were drafted and are now in the professional ranks, it’s frustrating to see that, because they were guys that I outperformed. But I can’t control that. You just have to trust in yourself that you can play at that level, play as hard as you can, do your best and keep moving up. That’s all I can do. And I will.”
(Top photo of Tucker Tynan: Niagara IceDogs / Vivid Eye Photography
