Last week's roster moves meant that Derek Ryan found himself, nominally, as the Carolina Hurricanes' fourth-line center – which is not how the smallish, skilled Ryan had ever thought of himself as a hockey player, nor what fourth-line centers are typically thought to be.
Those moves, though, turned the Hurricanes from a team with a traditional fourth line – checkers, penalty-killers, maybe a tough guy – to a team with four roughly equal scoring lines, the fourth of which just happens to be centered by Ryan.
“I'll take that as a compliment, for sure” Ryan said, his daughter on his lap while his son went plundering chocolate milk in a very happy locker room afterward.