Defenceman Ryan Mantha’s contract with the Edmonton Oilers ends June 30, and sadly, we hardly knew you because your career was derailed by a fluke blood clot in your eye.
He only played 43 games in Bakersfield, his sight damaged in his left eye during a Feb. 2, 2018, AHL game against the Iowa Wild. He hasn’t played since.
Mantha, whose uncle Moe played 25 games here in 1988, was a unique story in March 2017, when the Edmonton Oilers signed the 20-year-old to a three-year free-agent contract. They out-bid several NHL teams because he was a right-shot defenceman, six-foot-five and 229 pounds and he could pound the puck. He was the captain of the Niagara IceDogs on a junior team with current Oilers farmhand winger Kirill Maksimov. He was a very intriguing pickup after being originally drafted by New York Rangers in the fourth round in 2014, but they didn’t see a need to keep him.
“He really found his stride upon not signing with the Rangers and his overage junior prior to signing with the Oilers was very good,” said Craig Button, the NHL draft prospect expert. “He settled into his game and was very effective in many facets.”
Unfortunately, Mantha suffered the blood clot after taking a drop pass from current Oilers winger Patrick Russell and trying to unload a shot as an opposing player from Iowa went to poke-check him. All of a sudden, he couldn’t see as he tried to defend an ensuing three-on-two breakout with his partner, Keegan Lowe. He retained his peripheral vision the next day but not his straight-away sight because of damage to the central retinal artery, which carries oxygen-rich blood to the retina.
Mantha turns 24 in two months. His promising pro career never had any chance of gaining steam because of a medical situation that came out of nowhere during a harmless play that happens countless times during a game.
“I thought, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I didn’t feel a thing,” said Mantha, in a story a few months after the blood clot.
This wasn’t taking a puck in his eye or a stick under his visor. It was a play two-thirds of the way into his first pro season. And with the big kid out of the lineup, the organization became much deeper in young defencemen with the additions of Evan Bouchard, Dmitry Samorukov and Philip Broberg.
It wasn’t like ex-Oilers defenceman Ryan McGill, currently an assistant coach in Vegas, who took a puck in his left eye April 5, 1995, in Anaheim, six weeks after turning 26. He never played another game. McGill, legally blind in his left eye, at least got into 151 NHL games, though.
“Ryan (Mantha) had a solid developmental season in the AHL before the blood clot. He was showing all the signs of being a good, solid player who was steady, not flashy, but consistent. For me, that was a positive signal as an NHL prospect,” said Button. “He’s a terrific young man.”
When Oilers general manager Ken Holland was Detroit’s GM, the Red Wings were one of the NHL teams interested in signing Mantha, who is from Clarkston, Mich., 45 minutes away from Detroit. It’s also where Kid Rock’s from.
This ’n’ that: The Oilers have signed Swedish draft pick defenceman Filip Berglund but he’s going to stay with his club team Linkoping for this upcoming season and he may come over in 2021 … The Oilers are still mulling over whether to re-sign Swiss free-agent centre Gaetan Haas (10 points, 58 games) as a depth forward. If it’s for the same $875,000 one-way that Joakim Nygard got, they may well do so …The Oilers kicked the tires on centre/winger Mikhail Grigorenko but the free-agent forward signed a one-year deal in Columbus. Interestingly, he signed for $1.2 mil, very close to what the Oilers were offering Anton Slepyshev, Grigorenko’s CSKA teammate for a possible return from Russia but he re-upped with CSKA … Vegas team president George McPhee’s winger/son Graham, who is graduating from Boston College this year after the Oilers drafted him in the fifth-round in 2016, is still on their radar to sign. But more than likely it is just for an AHL contract, not an NHL deal … With Scott Howson officially starting his duties as AHL president May 1, the Oilers are now looking for a new director of player development. Wonder if they would consider ex-Oilers winger Dan Cleary, who is Shawn Horcoff’s assistant in player development with the Red Wings? Holland certainly knows Cleary from his Detroit days.
E-mail: jmatheson@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @NHLbyMatty
