Sports fans like to focus on statistics, but for Burnaby’s Ty Ronning, despite smashing the Vancouver Giants’ all-time goals-per-season record this spring, it was about playing game by game and pushing for playoffs.
“I was trying to play my best game – if contributing was putting the puck in the net, I was willing to do that,” Ronning said.
He ended the season with 61 goals, beating Kane’s previous record of 48.
In addition to his success with the WHL, the New York Rangers have had an eye on him since 2016. Earlier this year, Ronning signed an entry-level contract with the Rangers, which means in September he’ll be at the Madison Square Gardens Training Center in Westchester, N.Y., where both the Rangers and the Knicks train.
Ronning spent a lot of time as a kid playing every sport other than hockey – soccer, lacrosse, baseball, football, all of which contributed to his success in hockey. He worked on his passing in soccer, and in lacrosse, he learned about speed, timing and precision and to “keep your head on a swivel” and be aware of his surroundings.
But eventually he wanted to follow family tradition – his father, Cliff, is an 18-year NHL veteran.
“I fell in love with hockey because I wanted to be like my dad,” Ronning said. But his father had to take him aside and explain that he needed to work hard to get where he wanted to go.
“I had the natural work ethic, but I didn’t have the hands or the shot,” he said.
His father has been part of his sports career his whole life, but this has been in a teaching and mentoring role, encouraging Ronning to pursue his passion but guiding him how to do it right.
“He never was a pushy hockey parent,” Ronning said of his father.
Hard work and dedication paid off – Ronning was drafted from the Burnaby Winter Club as a bantam by the Vancouver Giants in 2012. In 2016, he was drafted by the New York Rangers 201st overall in the seventh round of the NHL draft.
Now he has until the end of the summer to prepare for the test of his life. He’s training up to six days a week, with both his father and two other trainers, Colton Schock and Angelo Schigs. He’s training on-ice and off-ice, still playing other sports and trying to gain some weight to bulk up for the big leagues.
“It’s a grind, but I love it.”
It’s all in preparation for training camp this fall where he’ll be watched like a hawk and his fate decided, whether he goes to Madison Square Gardens or first spends some time on the Rangers’ farm team, the Hartford Wolf Pack, where he played a few games the last couple years.
But if a positive attitude and work habits factor into it, Ronning has the winning formula to live the dream.
