16. The Pandemic Draft Kid

There aren’t many “Where were you when?” moments in life that we all share—that we can all pinpoint to a certain place and time. But sports have a way of manifesting those moments. In hockey, how many people say they were there, or will tell you where they were, the night Darryl Sittler scored 10 points, the day Wayne Gretzky was traded, or the afternoon Sidney Crosby’s golden goal slid underneath Ryan Miller? I wasn’t alive for those first two moments, but I can tell you where I was for the last one—in a bar in Florida with my parents, on our way to visit my aunt Jane, on my 15th birthday. I remember because we had to ask our waiter to change one of the bar’s many televisions to the game while everyone else was watching the NASCAR race (the 2010 Shelby American) that was on that day.

There are even fewer days in sports history as unmistakable as March 11, 2020, the day COVID-19 stopped basketball and the NBA stopped the world—or at least our little piece of it in North America. The pandemic didn’t start then. The virus had already been spreading for months, getting people sick and worse. But I remember it because a couple weeks earlier, for a different one of my birthdays (my 25th), a group of my friends and family had gotten together to celebrate. On February 28, 2020, we crowded around a table at a Toronto bocce ball bar, and we drank and played, sans masks, with no discussions of the pandemic, or gathering size, or risk. I’ve often talked with those people about how that night was our last of the Before Times. And if that’s true, then March 11 was the first day of the After Times marked by the pandemic. And it all started with a sport, and an athlete, when the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert tested positive, and the NBA decided to announce the suspension of its season.

It was the start of the After Times because it was a turning point, an awakening to the power of the virus. A day later, the NHL scrambled to put its season on pause as a reaction to the NBA. Within a week, almost every major hockey league in the world had done the same. And by the end of the month, restrictions and lockdowns had swept across the continent as governments took the NBA’s lead (long after doctors and experts had already told them to act).

For the 2020 NHL draft class, the sudden pauses—which eventually became outright cancellations—meant the end of their draft year. Just like that, there were no more games to play, no more opportunities to impress scouts, no more playoffs, no more Memorial Cup (for the first time in its 101-year history to that point, after it had survived being awarded through two World Wars), no more under-18 worlds. Nothing.

For a moment, whether the draft would even take place was drawn into question, with discussions about postponing it a year and combing two draft classes into one for 2021. Eventually, it was moved from Montreal’s Bell Centre and its planned June 26–27 dates to October 6–7 at the NHL Network’s studios in Secaucus, New Jersey, leaving the players to spend their summers waiting for their name to be called.

And the Leafs, armed with less information about the players than they’d planned for, would make 12 selections, their most since the draft’s reduction to seven rounds a decade and a half earlier.

For each of those 12 players, the pandemic played an immeasurable, still-yet-to-be-determined role in not just the way their draft seasons finished or their draft day unfolded (a day which was nothing like the one they’d spent their lives imagining), but also in the season that followed when the tangles of COVID-19 held on for longer than anyone imagined.

Among those 12 draft picks, no player was caught up in it more than Ryan Tverberg, the Leafs’ very last pick of the 2020 draft.

* * *

The start of Ryan Tverberg’s story is a lot like most other hockey players’ stories. His dad, Todd, was born to Norwegian ancestry but is from Minnesota and grew up playing the sport through high school, making it as far as one season in college at the University of St. Thomas (which is today a Division I program but was then a Division III program) before he quit. Todd met Paddy, an Asian Canadian, in Vegas when he was 29, and when the two got married they moved together to her hometown, the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, where they raised three kids. Cayla, their eldest, was born a year (almost to the day) before Ryan, the middle child. Chloe, their youngest, was born six years later. Cayla and Chloe did competitive dance. At two years old, Todd got Ryan into skates. Todd coached Ryan until he was in Tyke (now known as U7, or under-7) before handing over the reins to others so that he didn’t become the coach-dad who was always yelling at his kid. After Todd stopped coaching Ryan, he made hockey his full-time job in another way, running tournaments, skates, and camps around the city. Today, Paddy operates Maclaw, an artificial plant company that outfits indoor spaces like airports and hotel chains with fake trees, and Todd operates Prospects by Sports Illustrated, running hockey tournaments and camps around North America for top minor hockey, junior and college players.

“It’s the same old story,” Todd said, laughing, of Ryan’s hockey upbringing.

In Atom and Peewee from 9 to 12 years old, Ryan (who played his entire minor hockey career for the AAA Toronto Jr. Canadiens) and eventual Winnipeg Jets first-round pick Cole Perfetti were considered the two most talented players in their age group in the Greater Toronto Area. By Bantam and into Minor Midget, though, as other players began to hit their growth spurts as teenagers, Ryan, who had always been one of the smallest players on his team, never grew, putting him on a different path than his peers. When he finished seventh on the Jr. Canadiens in scoring with 19 points in 33 games in his OHL draft year at 15, he had to wait until the 12th round of the 2018 OHL draft to be selected by the Hamilton Bulldogs—a selection that happened in part because the team’s coach at the time, former NHLer John Gruden (who went on to become an assistant coach with the New York Islanders shortly after taking Ryan), was a close friend of Todd’s from Minnesota.

Despite a strong first training camp and preseason with the Bulldogs, where Ryan impressed as one of their better 2018 draftees, the combination of his size and where he was picked meant he was never going to make the team as a 16-year-old. After meeting with several Junior A teams later that fall, he decided against playing in the OJHL in favour of returning to minor hockey to play for the Midget AAA Jr. Canadiens in a first-line role (instead of the third- or fourth-line role he’d been promised at the second-tier junior level), a decision that, at the time, turned his focus to a college hockey scholarship and almost surely put the NHL draft out of the question.

“Ever since Ryan was a little kid, I always tried to turn him onto the NCAA way of things, just because of, No. 1, how many people actually really end up making it and it’s good for him to have something to fall back on, and No. 2 because I was a little bit of a late bloomer too and now I’m a little over 6’0”,” Todd said. “I didn’t grow until I was 18. So when Ryan was little and my wife was always giving it to me because all of these other kids were getting bigger, I was always like, ‘It’s coming, just wait.’”

He was right, too. At 17, after that final year in minor hockey and into an NHL draft year that had previously felt unattainable, Ryan grew, sprouting up to 5’10” (today he’s 6’0”, just like his dad) and making the jump to the Jr. Canadiens’ OJHL team, this time as a first-line player.

From there, his draft year, even before the pandemic hit, was a whirlwind. Out of nowhere, Ryan started his first season at the Junior A level with seven goals and 13 points in 11 games through September and early October, sneaking his way onto NHL Central Scouting’s early players to watch list with a “C” rating, indicating him as a potential late-round candidate for the 2020 draft. With the NHL Central Scouting recognition came his first real interest from NHL clubs and top college hockey programs. That fall, 41 college hockey programs reached out and he had to pick which five he was going to visit. (Recruits aren’t allowed to visit more than five under the NCAA’s bylaws.) After visiting Harvard, UMass, Princeton, Western Michigan, and Cornell, he announced his commitment to Harvard on December 24 of his draft year. And at ScotiaBank Pond, the Jr. Canadiens’ home arena in the Toronto neighbourhood of Downsview, the Leafs, in part because of their proximity and in part because of their interest, became Ryan’s most recurring guests, attending almost every one of his games. After being ranked 122nd among North American skaters on NHL Central Scouting’s January 13 midseason list, he then impressed at the CJHL Prospects Game’s Junior A showcase in Hamilton a day later, and the draft began to feel like more of a reality than an impossibility.

He knew, though, that if he was going to be picked that it was going to be late, and if he was going to solidify his case, he’d need the OJHL playoffs to do it, especially after he’d cooled off in February, posting just four points in eight games to finish his draft year with 26 goals and 51 points in 47 games. When the season abruptly ended and the summer dragged on as he waited, he worried that he might slip through the cracks.

The Leafs’ interest, however, never wavered. That September, when restrictions finally eased, Todd hosted the Elite Hockey U21 Showcase, a tournament that brought top drafted NHL prospects together with top 2020 hopefuls from the Toronto area one last time before the draft, and Leafs director of hockey and scouting operations Reid Mitchell reached out to him for video of it so that he could pass it around the office. In a rush, Todd got him the tape, knowing that Ryan had scored 16 points in six games to lead the showcase in scoring, outproducing older, already-drafted prospects like the Canucks’ Ethan Keppen, Panthers’ Cole Schwindt, Blues’ Keean Washkurak, Hurricanes’ Jamieson Rees, Devils’ Graeme Clarke, and soon-to-be top 2020 picks Brennan Othmann and Francesco Pinelli.

After that tournament, the Leafs reached out to Ryan and his advisors, asking to interview him. They eventually sat down with him to get to know him a little better and go over clips they’d cut of his play, discussing with him what he did right and wrong and where he needed to improve.

Still, when his draft day rolled around, Ryan and Todd wondered whether after everything that had happened, and with just one year at the Junior A level, he’d be picked at all. He held out hope for the Leafs, who were also his and his mom’s favourite team.

“I had hints that if I was going to be taken, it was going to be by them, but it was never promised,” Ryan said.

On the morning of the draft, he got up and went to the gym for a workout, checking in on the second- and third-round results between sets, knowing that he wouldn’t be picked that high. After his workout, he returned home for a bit of a draft party, with friends and family coming and going as he waited on the couch. But one by one, the rounds passed him by.

“It was a long day. The draft ended very late, and I was just waiting around the whole day. Morale was getting lower. It was tough toward the end,” Ryan said.

By the time the seventh round rolled around, and the Leafs had just two remaining picks, Ryan knew that they were likely his last shots at being selected. When the Leafs used the first of those selections, the 189th pick, to select Dexter Southfield School captain and Harvard University commit John Fusco, and their second one, 195th overall, to select Waterloo Black Hawks forward Wyatt Schingoethe out of the USHL, he thought it was over and allowed himself to be overwhelmed by the disappointment that he wasn’t going to be picked.

Next to him on the couch, Todd allowed himself to feel the same way.

“We knew there was interest and we thought they were going to take him but then it’s just getting so late, and these kids are getting drafted in the fifth and sixth round and it’s hard as a parent not to think, ‘This is just like the OHL draft.’ I’m thinking, ‘Ryan’s got a much better future than these guys,’” Todd said. “And when they took their last pick, that was it, we thought it was over.”

But in the final minutes of the draft, things took a sudden turn when the Leafs made a move, swapping their 2021 seventh-round pick for the Bruins’ 2020 seventh-round pick, to acquire one last selection, 213th overall (the fifth-to-last pick of the draft). As they did it, Ryan got a phone call from the Leafs telling him they were going to use it on him.

“You get the call after waiting around all day and it goes from low to high,” he said, recalling that moment. “I was just right back up.”

* * *

If the pandemic made Ryan’s draft year unconventional, unanticipated, and topsy-turvy, it turned his post-draft season into something else altogether.

On October 16, a little more than a week after the draft, as the second wave of the pandemic worsened, 18 of the players on the Yale men’s hockey team, who play out of Harvard’s Ivy League circuit, tested positive for COVID. A few weeks later, the Ivy League cancelled its season for the second straight year, this time before it even got off the ground. When it did, the Harvard men’s hockey team gave its players permission to play elsewhere (with several returning to the USHL, which played its 2020–21 season uninterrupted) or transfer schools altogether. Harvard also told Ryan that because it was going to have to push back eligibility for each player on the current roster, it would also likely be pushing back each of the upcoming recruiting classes by a year, meaning that he may not be able to join until the 2022–23 season.

Meanwhile, it also became clear that the OJHL’s season would not get going, either, as it and the OHL were prevented to operate under provincial health restrictions in Ontario. Not only could Ryan not begin his college career for a further two seasons, but he also couldn’t return to the Jr. Canadiens for a second campaign. Without anywhere to play, he and Todd pleaded with Jr. Canadiens general manager Blake Ricci for a move to the Junior A BCHL.

“It was kind of weird because we were very loyal to the Jr. Canadiens. Ryan has probably played there longer than every other tenured player ever, but it was clear in my mind that the OJHL wasn’t going to play and the BCHL was, so we had Ryan’s advisor talk to the team and so did I,” Todd said. “They didn’t want to trade him, of course, but we were just like, ‘You’ve got to do it for Ryan’s well-being.’ And the Leafs were like, ‘We’d like to see this kid play,’ so we were trying to find him a spot.”

After several discussions, Ricci and his staff obliged and on October 26, Ryan was traded to the Alberni Valley Bulldogs in Port Alberni, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, for the rights to one of their players, Keaton Mastrodonato, and future considerations. Though the BCHL wasn’t formally up and running, it was playing regional games and tournaments in localized areas. While it never showed up on an official stats page, Ryan began to play in his first games since February 22 of that year, a full eight months earlier. After making six appearances in the Islander Cup games played against the league’s three other teams located on Vancouver Island, however, the BCHL also stopped its own season before it ever formally began.

Without a place to play for a second time in a month, Ryan and his advisors then began looking into a transfer for him. And when word got out that he may be looking to leave Harvard, Todd guesses that as many as 20 schools reached out in the first week to test his interest in a move. Among them were the four schools that he’d visited a year earlier. But Ryan didn’t get a good feel from any of them, and he knew that his grades were good enough to land him wherever he wanted. (He was never the best student in the class, but he was always a good one and had been named his graduating class’ valedictorian in elementary school.) Then the coaching staff at the University of Connecticut reached out and offered to bring him in right away, even though it was already several games into the NCAA’s Hockey East conference schedule.

“It was a weird situation because normally the coaches will come out and watch live games, but this was the first time that they’d ever offered anybody without the head coach seeing him,” Todd said.

After Ryan did some research on UConn, he and his dad made a last-minute visit to its campus in Storrs, Connecticut, and Ryan fell in love with it as soon as they pulled in.

“It was very tricky, playing junior, and COVID, and just waiting around. When stuff with Harvard got a little complicated and then I just got the chance to go right into school, it sounded like, ‘Why not?’” Ryan said. “I just felt like it was something that needed to be done.”

As part of his transfer, Ryan, who enrolled in UConn’s sports management program, was also promised an immediate opportunity. Though he started on the fourth line in his first game, he was playing on the second line and the power play before the year was out. Given his midseason arrival and earlier-than-anticipated jump to the college level, he also played well, registering seven points and a plus-1 rating in 14 games.

“It was definitely different hopping in halfway through the year when the rest of the guys have already been there,” Ryan said, “but they were great in getting me into the speed of things so that I could just try and compete, that’s it. Thankfully it worked out because it was a long time coming.”

* * *

When Ryan picks up his phone in the fall of 2021 to reflect on the wild two years that preceded it, he’s back on campus at UConn, in the double room that he shares with one of his teammates. And things have finally stabilized. Though it’s technically his sophomore season, he’s in residence as if he were one of the freshmen, going through what feels like his freshman year. After everything that happened in his first half season at UConn, he’s planning to spend another four full years with the Huskies under the NCAA’s new exemptions for five-year student-athletes.

It has been crazy, he says, but he feels like he’s starting to thrive. It shows on the ice, too. Nine games into his sophomore year, he leads UConn in scoring with seven goals and 13 points (three more than his nearest teammate, Nashville Predators fourth-rounder and senior Jachym Kondelik). He’s starting to feel like he did in those early minor hockey days again.

And he’s thankful. For the Leafs, who took a chance on him. And for the support of his dad, who helped him get this far through countless hours spent on the ice together and eventually through that tape he sent the Leafs (of the tournament he organized, no less).

“My dad has been great from day one, since like 15 years ago when I first started playing, teaching me how to skate and just always being there, always watching my games, coming to as many games as he can—more than he should. He’s always giving me critiques and telling me what to work on. He’s like a second coach and trainer, which helped during COVID. He’s the biggest part of where I am,” Ryan says.

That it was the Leafs who drafted him has proven to be the biggest blessing of his life, though, he says.

These last two years, they’ve been his one constant.

If any other team had drafted him, he wouldn’t have been able to get any face time with the team or get onto the ice with its staff. That was true for most college players, who typically return to campuses in August, even in the Before Times, let alone in the After Times of the pandemic. Because the Leafs selected him, he has spent the last two summers making daily trips from Richmond Hill to Etobicoke to skate with their informal summer group at their practice facility, the Ford Performance Centre. Ryan grew up playing in games, practices, and tournaments at the Ford Performance Centre fourplex of rinks and guesses he skated on the Leafs’ pad “hundreds of times.” So skating there, now as a member of the Leafs, and having access to the sliding doors that open up into the Leafs’ locker room, has been something that he used to dream about, watching as the Leafs players came and went as a kid. He was even able to fit in a few more skates during UConn’s two-week Christmas break in his freshman year.

“To see their little facilities down there, to be a part of that, and to see their workout room out to the side that I’ve never seen, it’s pretty cool,” he said, pausing. “It’s hard to believe.”

Even harder to believe, though, were the greetings of “Bergy, how’s it going?” when he returned from UConn to rejoin the skates in his first full off-season as a member of the Leafs organization. He was stunned when all the players and staff remembered him from the year prior.

“It’s just a very small group of like eight to 10 of us to start. So I’m just skating around, working out, and just talking with [Jason] Spezza, [Jake] Muzzin, [Zach] Hyman when he was there, and [Travis] Dermott. So that’s just pretty cool, to walk around and hang out with the guys that you see on TV every night. And they’re all great guys. Like you walk in there, you don’t know how these guys are going to act, but everyone’s just awesome and just talking to you. It’s great. They’re all very good people,” Ryan said.

Todd has seen a change in his son, too. When Ryan returns from a skate or a game of ultimate frisbee with the Leafs, his eyes are lit up and he carries himself differently.

“It has been fantastic that the Leafs took him. So many things have opened up for him and his motivation level is just through the roof. I’ve never seen him like this,” Todd said. “The best thing about Ryan is his competitiveness is crazy. I know a lot of people say that, but until you meet the kid and see how hard he tries, you won’t get it. Even if you’re just playing a stupid game that he picked up at the house for the first time, he’s not messing about. He wants to win. That has helped him get a long way because in those formative years he always had to play tough because he was smaller. And ever since the Leafs selected him, it’s night and day the amount of work and effort he’s putting in, even compared to what he was like before. It’s a new level right now.”

When Ryan stops to consider his life since the start of the pandemic, his winding road to the draft and beyond, and everything else—the text messages he exchanges with Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser, the Leafs’ Hockey Hall of Famer senior director of player development, the video sessions they do with him to go over his games in segments and break things down for him, all of it—he can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened if the Leafs didn’t make that last-second trade to grab him.

But they did, and they changed his life, and he made it through the other side of a two-year period that could have gone in a completely different direction, with his dream still in sight.

And that, he says, is what the draft—and his dream—is all about.