Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
He put up 51 assists in 56 games in 10-11 in the OHL and in his junior career had an almost 2:1 ratio of assists to goals. Ritchie is more of a 1:1 guy, at least so far.
And watching him in the NHL he's shown some excellent playmaking abilities for a young power forward.
He hasn't been disappointing. Despite getting only 13 minutes a night mostly with scrubs he finished the season top 40 in ES points at his position, around guys like Vrbata, Semin, Doan, and Eriksson. With an increased role next year and some PP time I expect we'll see a jump towards decent 2nd line production. He already showed that in the 2nd half of the year scoring at a 47 point pace over the 2nd half of his season. There's no reason he can't be a 20-30 guy which is an enticing package for a player of his size.
That said, Ritchie is a better prospect than Kassian ever was, so the projections and expectations should be higher.
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I missed that year - but that was also 2 years post-draft. He was drafted by Buffalo in 2009. Not trying to knock Kassian down (he has been improving) as much as trying to show that Ritchie is a vastly superior prospect to what Kassian was at the same age, as Kassian seems to be the guy that always seems to get compared to Ritchie.