Terry Ryan: Fights, Film, and Folklore
Terry Ryan entertains with stories of his hardest-hitting hockey fights, his excursion into film and how writing became his newest passion.
Originally published in the Jan. 15 edition of The Newfoundland Herald.
By Jason Sheppard
When Terry Ryan released his first book, Tales of a First-Round Nothing: My Life as an NHL Footnote in 2014, the response was more than he could have ever imagined. The widely read (and praised) memoir fast became a best-seller. Now, with his just-released second book from Flanker Press, Fights, Film, and Folklore, Ryan offers an entertaining book not only for hockey lovers but for anybody who love enthusiastically told tales from one heck off a captivating storytelling.
“I appreciate that hockey fans and non-fans get it,” Ryan tells The Herald of the book’s reception. “The first two things that came to my head when thinking about a second book was how am I going to do this and who’s it gonna appeal to?” For Ryan, who rarely shies away from a challenge, writing another book was simply one more he was eager to approach. “I do enjoy a challenge and sometimes that challenge might seem a little far-fetched but by navigating my way and believing in myself, I wanted to take it.”
WRITING AND INFLUENCES
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Writing didn’t just come to Ryan. He’s been writing ever since he was a child attending St. Patrick’s School in St. John’s. From grade four to grade nine he took a creative writing course which he enjoyed immensely. However, at the time it was something he didn’t quite feel ready to share with everybody. “I certainly wasn’t about to tell my buddies back then that I wrote poetry. You’d probably get punched in the face,” Ryan says looking back. His parents, Terry Ryan Sr. and mother Gail encouraged Ryan’s writing interests and to read whatever he could from Rolling Stone Magazine to Judy Blume novels which in fact, inspired the title of Ryan’s first book.
Another of Ryan’s writing influences was sports journalist Saul “Red” Fisher. “He was almost as big a hero to me as Guy Lafleur,” Ryan says. “When I went on the ice, I would emulate Lafleur, but when I wrote, I would emulate Fisher.” Before writing the first book, Ryan spoke at public events where he easily charmed listeners by his story-telling abilities. “I think Ron MacLean was the first to say I should write this stuff down. Now we’re on book number two, which I never thought would happen.”
Ryan insists he talks a lot so naturally he writes like that as well. Whenever ideas come to him he’ll start writing and eventually stories will come from those ideas. Some of these recent stories he posted to Facebook which caught the attention of Flanker Press who then broached the idea of a follow-up. However, Ryan didn’t want to write just another hockey book — he wanted to include anecdotes about himself which could stand on their own. “After the first book came out and I realized people liked it, I thought maybe they’d be interested in another one. That was two years ago. Then this year with COVID-19, it really accelerated the process. I thought if I was ever going to put out another book, I need to do it now,” he says.
‘ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE’
With Fights, Film, and Folklore Ryan knew which angles he wanted to explore; the first, examines the author’s feelings on the topic of fighting within the sport, speaking primarily from his own experiences. The second section details his life working in film and TV, notably fighting alongside Jason Momoa on Frontier and hanging out Ethan Hawke while filming the 2016 film Maudie. Within this second section there is one part of the book which very much stands out to him — the time he met Canadian icon Gord Downie. “Writing that story brought up a lot of emotions for me in the fact that he was so brave with everything he was going through and the fact that I got to meet him.”
Ryan says there are a number of ways in which writing a book does compare to playing a game; both are about an approaching a situation and accomplishing a goal. For this book, Ryan reached out to past teammates in an effort to recall and detail past events as accurately as possible. He describes the process as everyone once again working together to accomplish a certain goal.
That’s just a small aspect where Ryan gives his all to whatever task he sets out for himself. “When I go on the ice I can’t predict what Eric Lindros is going to do but I can be focused and give him the best version of me, the player. It’s the same thing when I’m writing. I’m going to give readers the best version of me, Terry the author.”
The one thing Ryan says he’d like readers to come away with after reading the book is to just feel inspired. “I’d like people to just go for whatever they wish to do in life. I want people to follow their creative outlets and realize anything’s possible.”
Fights, Film, and Folklore is available at Flanker Press, online & local stores.
