Emery, 35, remembered as great teammate
When the Philadelphia Flyers began building the team that went on a 2010 Stanley Cup Final run, one of the first pieces in free agency was bringing Ray Emery back to North America.
The embattled goalie spent a year in Russia after an up-anddown start with the Ottawa Senators that included a run to the 2007 Stanley Cup Final. The Flyers took a chance on him and prolonged his NHL career by more than 100 games. Emery returned twice more to Philadelphia, most recently for the 2016 stretch run.
On July 15, the Hamilton (Ontario) Police Department announced that it had recovered Emery’s body. According to police, Emery, 35, was reported missing in Hamilton Harbour at roughly 6 a.m. and authorities didn’t recover his body until nearly 3 p.m. after he drowned in Lake Ontario.
The night before, he had played in a charity game hosted by former Flyers teammate Zac Rinaldo.
“I am (expletive) crushed,” tweeted Dan Carcillo, who played with Emery in Chicago and Philadelphia. “You will be missed deeply Ray. I love you man.”
The man who gave Emery his first second chance in the NHL was Paul Holmgren, the Flyers general manager when Emery first signed.
“What I remember most about Ray is his competitiveness and his love of his teammates and his teammates’ love of him,” Holmgren told the Courier-Post. “He was just a great, great teammate that everyone loved and everyone wanted to be around.”
The Flyers had high hopes for Emery, who played 29 games in his first season in Philadelphia before he was shut down with a hip injury called avascular necrosis, in which part of the bone dies from lack of blood flow.
It required surgery, taking bone from his shin and putting it in his hip. When it was done, doctors questioned whether Emery would ever walk properly again, let alone play hockey.
“Little did we know it was going to be such a bad injury that Ray would have had to go through,” Holmgren said. “Like, what we thought at the time was probably a career-ending surgery, for him to bounce back like he did showed the character of the person.”
Three years after the Flyers first acquired Emery, he won a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks. He had a career year as Corey Crawford’s backup with a 17-1-0 record in 21 appearances with a 1.94 goalsagainst average and .922 save percentage.
Off the ice, checkered past.
With the Senators he was fined for being late, complained Emery had a about a lack of playing time, threw his stick into the stands during a practice when he learned he wasn’t getting a start and fought a teammate in a different practice.
In Russia, he was seen on camera attacking an equipment manager who handed him a cap to wear on the bench after he had been pulled from a game.
“Whatever happened where Ray was let go by his team … our team was playing in Ottawa and I found a way to go see Ray,” Holmgren recalled. “We spent a few hours together that day and it just went from there. I liked Ray as a player. I liked his combativeness, his competitiveness, his athleticism. I knew there were some red flags there that we talked about at great length.
“The time he was here, he was great. I can’t speak about the other issues he had because I really don’t know. He was great as a Flyer and a great teammate and great competitor for our franchise.”