Like some enforcers before him, it appears Rick Rypien was fighting his own demons.
We won’t claim to have known Rick Rypien well.
There were a few chats in a handful of dressing rooms over the years, but never the kind of conversation that would qualify as relationship building.
But we’ve known plenty of players like Rypien over the years, and most – if not all – filled the same role on the roster.
The tortured heavyweight has become a hockey cliché. Spend some time around the game and you’ll see plenty of them.
Dave Semenko. Bob Probert. John Kordic. Louie DeBrusk. Derek Boogaard.
All had a soft, off-ice side to them that could never reconcile with the hardened fighter they had to be on the ice in order to take home that fat National Hockey League paycheque.
So to quiet the demons, they chose drink, or drugs, or constant angst. And it allowed them to deal with the behemoth who awaited in the next town, on the next roster, or the children who looked up at them innocently and asked, "Are you going to beat up so and so next game?"
So we won’t claim to know for sure where Rick Rypien’s troubles started. We don’t yet know how (or why) he died at his home in southern Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass, and we’ll likely never know for sure whether his demons were there from birth, in some sort of chemical imbalance or bi-polar disorder, or if they arrived later on.
Was he suffering from mental illness? And if so, why couldn’t it be treated?
Was he another player who gradually realized he would never be skilled enough at the game not to have to punch for his paycheque? But perhaps the longer he played, the less he could stomach what he had to do every other night to hold his spot on the team.
"Rick has been a beloved member of the Canucks family for the past six years," his former team said in a statement released Monday night. "Rick was a great teammate and friend to our players, coaches and staff. We send our deepest condolences to the Rypien family at this most difficult time."
They’ll say that about any player who passes tragically at the young age of 27. But when you did what Rypien did, the part about being "a great teammate" carried a little extra weight.
Rypien was that fourth-line cruiserweight, no heavyweight at 5-11 and 190 lbs. He was smaller than the Hal Gills, Ben Eagers, Boris Valabiks or Cody McLeods, though he’d fought them all before.
Rypien was, pound-for-pound, as punishing a fighter as we can recall seeing in years. Like a Wendel Clark in the old Norris Division, Rypien regularly beat up Edmonton’s Zack Stortini, despite giving up five inches and 25 lbs.
And that’s what always puzzles about players who do what these guys do. They always look so comfortable in their craft when they set the ground rules with a fellow enforcer while waiting for the puck to be dropped.
You never see the fear when they stand there in front of 18,000 fans, bare-knuckle fighting under the glare of the TV cameras. But so many of them speak later of how scared they were at that moment; how they barely got out of the shower after the game when the thought of the tough guy from tomorrow night’s opponent darkened their head space.
The toughest part, a fighter once told us, is that guys like Rypien could never let that fear show. That there was no one to talk to about it.
Their persona is such a big part of the role as the protector on their team, that there is nowhere for that player to unload his baggage.
So, in the case of so many, it gets unloaded at the bar. Or in the case of Probert and Boogaard, the dealer gets a call.
Whatever led to the phone call that Alberta RCMP received just after 12 p.m. Monday, concerning a "sudden and non-suspicious death," we may never know.
But we know this for sure: it is seldom a 20-goal winger or power play defenceman whose home the cops arrive at when those calls are received.
It’s no cliché, the words they use when they talk about what guys like Rypien do.
It is, to be sure, the toughest job in hockey.
Too tough, sadly, for so many of them.
