Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Travis Boyd had his name on the scoresheet before the Hershey Bears could even pay tribute to him.
Playing his first game at Giant Center in more than six years, the Toronto Marlies forward set up their opening goal 7:39 into an eventual 5-2 win over the Bears on Friday night.
Marlies head coach John Gruden had Boyd in the starting lineup, and the Bears and their fans paid tribute with a video and a standing ovation during a break midway through the opening period.
Then Boyd made the evening even more special. After that first-period assist, he jumped on a Hershey turnover and slipped a shot between Garin Bjorklund’s pads for a 2-2 tie in the second period. From there his cross-ice feed through heavy coverage set up Reese Johnson for a go-ahead goal later in the period. His four-point night finished by scoring an empty-netter with 1:37 to go, and he took a spin as the game’s first star.
It had been a winding journey for Boyd that finally brought him back to the place where his pro career started in the spring of 2015.
“The whole night was such a special night for me,” Boyd said afterward. “I had no idea they were going to do a tribute in the first period, but it really meant a lot to me. I look back on my years here and can’t find one bad day in there. I have so much respect for the Hershey Bears organization and what they do, this fan base, and to be able to have a chance to play for them.
“To come back – and the applause at the end of the game, the applause for the video tribute and everything – it was just icing on the cake that I happened to have a pretty good personal night, too.”
Boyd is one of the Washington Capitals’ many successful development projects to come out of Hershey. A 2011 sixth-round draft pick, he recorded 172 points in 221 games in Hershey before graduating to the NHL. He was a Second Team AHL All-Star in 2016-17, and will long be remembered by Bears fans for his Game 7 overtime goal against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the 2016 playoffs. Boyd made his NHL debut on Dec. 4, 2017, and was with the Capitals as they won their first Stanley Cup in 2018.
After he signed with Toronto in 2020, Boyd’s journey took him to Vancouver, Arizona and Minnesota. He had his best NHL production with the Coyotes, scoring 17 goals in 2021-22 and 15 goals in 2022-23, before an upper-body injury cut short his 2023-24 season. The native of Hopkins, Minn., and former University of Minnesota Golden Gopher joined the Wild and got to play three games for his hometown team last season, spending most of the year leading the AHL’s Iowa Wild in scoring. In all, Boyd has 299 NHL contests on his ledger.
Now he is back in the Maple Leafs organization, brought on board as a free agent to mentor the organization’s prospects. It’s a much different place in his career than a decade ago, but he can still produce, too. He has seven goals and 11 points through 10 games for the Marlies entering Wednesday’s action.
It’s that kind of early production that can help a team ease some of the adjustments that come with significant offseason roster changes. When he was starting out in Hershey, Boyd could look to teammates like Chris Bourque, Carter Camper, Garrett Mitchell and others to help ease that transition for him. With nine rookies for the Marlies this season, Toronto is counting on Boyd to bring those same lessons to the Marlies’ room. Boyd’s bonds with those Hershey leaders remain tight, and Mitchell, now a Hershey broadcaster, embraced him after Friday’s game.
“For me as a young guy,” Boyd recounted, “just coming to the rink every day and watching the guys that have been doing it for eight, 10 years, and trying to learn every single day… I was very fortunate to have some older veteran forwards who were really good to me my first few years here.”
Who knows when – or even if – Boyd will have a chance to skate in Hershey again. But Friday offered an opportunity for both him and Hershey fans to look back at some very special years together.
“A night I’ll honestly never forget,” Boyd said. “This is one that I’m certainly going to remember for a long time.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.