Hockey Fights Cancer game has special meaning for Canes’ Ryan Dzingel, his dad
Ryan Dzingel mostly remembers his father’s tears.
Dzingel was in his senior year of high school at Wheaton Academy, a private Christian school in West Chicago, Ill. Having competed in the U.S. Hockey League, the Carolina Hurricanes forward had returned home after the hockey season to play shortstop for the Warriors.
To play his last year of baseball.
“I had played baseball my whole life,” Dzingel said in an interview. “My dad wanted me to play baseball. He was really good, had played in college at Louisiana Tech and had a small stint in the minors. He kind of lived through me.”
Rick Dzingel, a longtime Chicago White Sox fan, put a baseball in Ryan’s hands at an early age. He would hit hard grounders at his son, not letting up, to sharpen his fielding skills. He taught him how to hit. He helped coach him at Wheaton.
“I always made him do a little bit extra because I always knew he had the talent,” Rick Dzingel said in an interview. “He had the passion and the drive and the will to make it.”
But Ryan said one of his father’s best friends, Dan Lopatka, had introduced Ryan to another sport, hockey, and he soon had a dual passion. He learned he could skate, fast. He could score. Those fielding skills made for good, soft hands. The hitting drills helped his hand/eye coordination.
By 2010, a decision had to be made, baseball or hockey. So there Dzingel was in the spring, in a high school baseball playoff game against Montini Catholic High. He had hit .590 as a senior, he said, and would be named to an all-state team and wanted to cap off the season with a state title.
“I was intentionally walked three times,” Dzingel said. “We lost by one run.”
Rick Dzingel took it hard. Not the loss. The loss of a dream, maybe, but not a game.
“We both knew that was the end,” Ryan said. “I think he wanted to think it wasn’t but he knew. He was sad about it. I’ll never forget he cried in the outfield and I got walked three times.”
There would be more tears to come, none about baseball.
Dzingel family faces a tough ordeal
In January 2013, Ryan Dzingel was on the Ohio State hockey team and on an 11-hour bus drive with the Buckeyes to play at Northern Michigan. His phone buzzed. It was his dad.
Doctors had discovered cancer in Rick Dzingel’s throat and lymph nodes. Chemotherapy treatments would soon begin.
“That was a tough time,” Ryan Dzingel said. “I grew up and got stronger. It was a long battle for him but my Dad is a warrior.”
Ryan, 27, is the second of Rick and Linda’s three children -- older brother Rick is 30 and sister Dana is 22. Ryan returned home to Wheaton from Ohio State as often as he could, wanting to be there with his father, with his family. Wanting to help the man he always called his rock.
After chemotherapy, after 44 radiation treatments, Rick Dzingel was told the cancer was in remission. At 57, he has been cancer-free the past six years.
“It was a rough ordeal,” Rick Dzingel said. “The fight was for the family. But I made it through. God didn’t want me. I think I’ve got too many people to aggravate still.”
On Saturday, the Hurricanes will host the Florida Panthers in their annual Hockey Fights Cancer game at PNC Arena. The league-wide initiative broadens awareness about the disease and raises money in the battle against cancer.
“It touches so many families, so many people,” Rick Dzingel said.
The Dzingels, father and son, can laugh a little about Ryan’s old baseball days now. Rick likes to recall that when Ryan was walked three times in that playoff game, he was Wheaton’s first-base coach and told his son, “Hey, Ryan, you’re not that good.”
“And both of us were crying at the end,” Rick said. “I knew he was going to hockey and baseball was done. It was a real tear-jerker.”
A seventh-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators, the 204th player taken in 2011., Ryan has become an established NHL player and goal-scorer, signing a two-year contract with the Canes as a free agent after last season.
“All these people said he wasn’t going to make it,” Rick Dzingel said. “He proved a lot of people wrong.”
Ryan Dzingel was able to visit with his family this week as the Hurricanes were in Chicago to play the Blackhawks. The Dzingels were at the United Center as the Canes won 4-2, flying back to Raleigh after the game.
“We’re a close-knit family,” Rick Dzingel said. “I still have tears in my eyes when I have to say goodbye to him.”
Florida Panthers at Carolina Hurricanes
Saturday, 7 p.m., PNC Arena
Hockey Fights Cancer game: Cancer awareness, research and support groups will be on the arena concourse to speak with fans and promote the work of their respective groups.
