Ryan Reaves is calling it a career after 16 NHL seasons, and the longtime enforcer made the announcement in the most Ryan Reaves way possible: with a farewell that mixed honesty, humor, and a little bite.
The 39-year-old, a fifth-round pick by the St. Louis Blues in the 2005 NHL Draft, posted the news on Instagram and made clear that the hits, fights and bruises have finally caught up to him. He wrote that “Father Time remains undefeated,” and added, “Every hit, every fight-it’s taken its final toll on me.”
Reaves also looked back on the path that took him from a kid who loved the physical side of sports to a player who lasted 16 years in the league. In his message, he said, “I had dreams of being an athlete.
Football, hockey-it didn’t matter. I learned at a young age that I just wanted to lay people out.”
He closed with, “Mic drop, gloves drop. Reavo out.”
His career began in St. Louis, where he spent his first seven NHL seasons and played 419 of his 962 career games.
Over that stretch, he scored 27 goals and added 24 assists, while racking up 1,137 penalty minutes over his entire career, including 695 with the Blues. For a player built on toughness, that kind of number tells the story just fine.
Reaves became a familiar and popular figure in St. Louis, both for the way he played and for the personality that came with it.
The Blues traded him to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017, along with a second-round pick, in exchange for Oskar Sundqvist and a 2017 first-round pick, No. 31 overall, which St. Louis used to select Klim Kostin.
After leaving the Blues, Reaves played for the Penguins, Vegas Golden Knights, New York Rangers, Minnesota Wild, Toronto Maple Leafs and, last season, the San Jose Sharks. That made seven teams in all. He also reached the Stanley Cup with Vegas in 2017-18, when the Golden Knights lost to the Washington Capitals.
Some of the moments fans will remember most have nothing to do with a stat sheet. There was the kiss he blew to the Dallas Stars bench during the 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs.
There was the warm-up routine with Vladimir Tarasenko, when the two would twirl and shoulder bump on their knees as the skating began. There was the hot dog hat for player of the game.
And there was the press conference appearance where he showed up trying to look like Blues coach Ken Hitchcock, a bit that had the room laughing.
Reaves said he may be done playing, but not done with hockey. “I may not be on the ice anymore, but I know I will always be close to hockey in one way or another,” he wrote.
What comes next is his call, but the retirement leaves one obvious opening: he’d make a pretty good studio analyst.
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