ST. JOHN'S, N.L. -- Former NHLer Terry Ryan laughed through tears Wednesday, recalling how playing ball hockey with fishermen now lost off Newfoundland made him feel like the superstar he might have been.

"I remember the first game, I got player of the game and they handed me a lobster," said the 1995 first-round draft pick for the Montreal Canadiens.

"They just loved the water. They loved fishing. They loved everything about it."

Ryan, who grew up in Mount Pearl, N.L., played ball hockey the last three years with commercial fisherman Keith Walsh and his buddy Billy Humby, making it as far as the provincial championship finals this summer.

Both men, along with Keith's son, Keith Walsh Jr., and his father Eugene Walsh were on board an open, seven-metre boat reported overdue Tuesday night before two bodies were recovered near St. John's.

Ryan and other sources who know the family confirmed the bodies recovered were Billy Humby and Keith Walsh Jr.

The search continued Wednesday for the other two men after the coast guard found the overturned boat earlier in the day.

All were from the close St. John's enclave of Shea Heights.

Friends of the fishermen said it's especially crushing that three generations of one family were on that boat.

Melissa Druken, chairwoman of the Shea Heights Community Board, said it's "an absolute tragedy" that affects every single family.

"Numb is a really good description," she said. "The phrase on social media circles has been: 'There are no words.' That's what is repeated over and over again -- there are no words."

Ron Ellsworth, deputy mayor of St. John's, said the deaths will have a deep ripple effect in Shea Heights.

"Everybody knows everybody and it will be devastating for the community," he said.

Ryan said he had known Keith Walsh for two decades. But he said they became the best of friends after Walsh asked him to join the local ball hockey team.

"He said: 'I don't have big signing bonuses, but I can take you out fishing whenever you want."' And he did.

"We'd go out for hours. We'd catch the fish and they'd cut it up and gut it and every time they'd give me all the fish. I'd say: 'Keith, you don't have to do that.' And he'd say: 'You're my buddy."'

Ryan doesn't shy from the fact that his NHL career, considered one of the league's ultimate first-round draft busts, didn't go as planned. His tenure of just eight games has been blamed in part on his own admitted attitude problems and a career-ending ankle injury.

But Keith Walsh wouldn't hear of it when Ryan talked sometimes of how he'd messed up his big shot. He would introduce him with pride to neighbourhood kids, and wanted him to be part of a ball hockey clinic he was planning.

Ryan said when they'd go on the water in Walsh's small recreational boat, Walsh would make sure his friend had a life jacket, that the seas weren't rough and they weren't far from shore or other boats.

"I always felt comfortable and safe with Keith in every situation."

Conditions were calm under blue skies as searchers went about their work Wednesday in a zodiac and police boat as a coast guard ship could be seen farther offshore.

The Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre said a Cormorant Helicopter, Hercules plane, two coast guard vessels and several local fishing vessels have all been involved in the search.

Lt. Len Hickey said the boat was discovered Wednesday near the men's fishing nets, but he wasn't able to provide an exact location.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Boyd Merrill said there were high winds Tuesday, possibly making it difficult for boats travelling in the area outside the harbour.

"It was windy and as such the waves and wave conditions would have been much more difficult to manoeuvre a boat in," he said.

The Transportation Safety Board sent a team of investigators to the scene Wednesday.

In a report last month into three crab fishing deaths in 2015 in Placentia Bay, the TSB said there were 189 deaths involving commercial fishing vessels between 2000 and 2015 in Canada, 31 of them in Newfoundland and Labrador alone.

"The number of accidents involving loss of life on fishing vessels remains too high," the report said.

Ryan planned to head back to the St. John's harbour wharf where friends and family have kept vigil.

"It's the tightest community I've ever seen in my life," he said. "It was a privilege to play with Shea Heights."

   - With files from Aly Thomson and Alison Auld in Halifax