After spending his entire rookie year pro with the Hershey Bears, Ryan Hofer played with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays for a majority of the 2024-25 season.
Hofer, a Capitals’ sixth-round pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, notched 26 points (12g, 14a) in 52 games for the ECHL’s best regular-season team. And one of his 12 goals received a major end-of-season honor earlier this week.
The ECHL named Hofer’s March 12 tally against the Greenville Swamp Rabbits as the league’s “Goal of the Year” for the 2024-25 season.
The tally, Hofer’s ninth of the season, came in the second period of the Stringrays’ 5-1 victory. A hustling Hofer forced a turnover as he was backchecking a Swamp Rabbits player. The two-way centerman then picked up the loose puck near the left circle, dangled the puck between his legs, and beat Swamp Rabbits goaltender Kolby Hay with a shot to the top of the net.
“I’m super grateful and honored to be chosen for ECHL Goal of the Year,” Hofer said in an interview with the Stingrays. ”I wasn’t going out there looking for a goal of the year candidate, but being able to go out there and pull off a move like that in a game then be awarded for it is a really cool feeling.”
Hofer will likely figure into Hershey’s plans more-so in 2025-26 during the final year of his entry-level contract. The 6-foot-4, 189-pound forward could end up in one of Hershey’s bottom-six center spots after veteran centermen Mike Sgarbossa and Riley Sutter left the organization and are going overseas next season.
During his two years in the Capitals’ organization, Hofer has posted eight points (4g, 4a) in 45 games with the Hershey Bears.
