Nick Ritchie discussion - clears waivers

[ACC1224]

I don't see why Ritchie is the one getting all of the criticism for that goal?

Sandin made a terrible pinch on what should have been Ritchie's guy, and that is where Ritchie was. Perlini was Spezza's guy and Spezza was coasting all the way up the ice (and was in a terrible position in the offensive end to begin with), until the end when he realized that he probably should be covering his man on what should not have even been a 2-on-1. Ritchie was actually trying to adjust and cover Spezza's guy after Sandin took his guy, and actually almost did it, but couldn't get there in time.

If anything, that goal is on Sandin and Spezza long before it is on Ritchie.

....but he was the only guy I saw on my tv screen when they scored. Doesn't that make it his fault?

 

[saltming]

Well he did something

 

[cupcrazyman]

 

[McSnypsky]

Not listening to Button he's a tool, if he says something the opposite is/was probably true!

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Florida and Carolina would be bad matchup once again for these Leafs in a playoff series. With the way they play their fans are also loud and engaged.

Dubas has built better depth than I thought possible, but, this team still creates major doubts for me until they prove otherwise.

We all hoped Ritchie could provide some of what they lacked. He just didn't seem engaged far too often.

Carolina is not even that physical of a team? They are a stingy defensive team with good depth and speed throughout their lineup, but they are not going to dominate the Leafs physically. If anything, I am more concerned with having guys like Ritchie, Simmonds, Spezza, Muzzin, and Holl in the lineup because the Canes will just blow right past them. We also won't have to worry about them until the Conference Finals, if we both get there, since I doubt either of us are going to be WC teams this year.

With Florida, you need to be able to shut down two guys: Barkov and Huberdeau. They were only 7-5-0 with Barkov out of the lineup. Their depth is excellent when those two guys are humming... But Bennett/Duclair/Reinhart/Verhaeghe/Lundell lose a lot of their effectiveness when those guys are not humming. Bobrovsky has always been up and down in Florida, and while their defense has a great Ekblad-Weegar combo, the rest of their defense is worse than ours. Massive props for their 10-0-1 start, but they have been 12-7-3 the rest of the way (and that is with the 4 game winning streak they are on right now). Also keep in mind that Florida only has one guy over 50% in the dot (Barkov with 54.6%) whereas the Leafs have the best faceoff percentage in the league. It is hard for their game to click against a team like ours when they can't even win draws, and that is against teams that are worse than we are in the dot.

 

[The Iceman]

Mason Marchment played 4 games with Toronto, playing 12 minutes the first game and then no more than 8:21 the rest of the 3 games, so to have a visceral memory of how bad he was seems like a stretch because he just didn’t get any kind of audition compared to your random Denis Malgin or Nic Petan.

Mason Marchment Game by Game Stats and Performance | ESPN

Clearly he got lost in the shuffle, which happens with non drafted long shot prospects. I don’t think it’s something to seriously harp on but at the same time it would have been nice to have kept him around a little longer, because why develop these guys for multiple seasons only to toss them away?

Not sure about visceral memory but I did remember Fred Perlini, father of Brendan playing for the Leafs ever so briefly.

 

[ACC1224]

Not sure about visceral memory but I did remember Fred Perlini, father of Brendan playing for the Leafs ever so briefly.

I remember watching many games in the St Catharines arena with Fred Perlini, Bruce Boudreau and Walt Podubny playing for the Saints.
Good times.

 

[Warden of the North]

Pretty disappointing but a much more manageable situation then are usual terrible contracts of yore.

 

[DarkKnight]

I’ll miss what he brought to the team, as soon as I figure out what that was…

 

[wingman75]

Everyone was wondering who would be waived when we ran into cap trouble. I think as the first few months played out, it became clear this is where we were going to end up. I think he can bring something, but as others have said, he doesn't bring it consistently, and lets face it, the other players on this roster are simply better in almost all areas.

Hope he sticks around, they guys seemed to like him, and he could be a good taxi squad depth option if the opportunity presents. If he is claimed, I am not sure I see a who lot of down side to that either.

 

[rdogg]

I can't imagine anyone claiming Ritchie, but the league does seem to have an obsession with claiming Toronto's cast-offs.

 

[justashadowof]

The cap hit implications of buying him out in the summer is $300k in 2022-23 and $1.1M in 2023-24. In contrast, simply demoting him next season leaves the team with a cap hit around $1.275M for 1 season.

 

[DarkKnight]

To be fair, Dubas’ other good summer pickups offset to a degree this uselessness.

 

[kevsh]

It's hilarious how people twist and turn everything here. Reality is stranger to many.

Cherry's own words: “We have the Stanley Cup champions, who have won two out of three Stanley Cups, right? Their [roster is] full of Canadians, full of guys from the OHL and they win two out of three," said Cherry. "How many Canadians did the Leafs draft? Zero. "

That led into his claiming Ritchie was the better choice than Nylander:

“They passed on a guy, Nick Ritchie, who is 6-foot-3, 230 pounds [and had] 100 minutes in penalties. Oh, you’re going to say he’s a dummy. Only three guys in the whole draft scored more goals than this guy. "

But it was clear, Cherry's problem was the Leafs draft too many Europeans and not enough Canadians

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nh...s-for-passing-on-canadians-in-draft-1.2796331

 

[Nylander88]

Massively disappointed. Thought he was going to be a great add. That said, he adds a much needed element of toughness imo. We have added players that play fearless and harder than what we're used to seeing (Bunting, Kase)...but I still think we need a guy who is "drop the mitts" tough. That said, I think Clifford is better served for this team, at a cheaper cost, than Ritchie. Clifford can PK as well, and certainly skates much better. Engvall comes out for me, if this was the start of the playoffs. Playoff lineup up front:
Bunting-Matthews-Marner
Kerfoot-Tavares-Nylander
Mikheyev-Kampf-Kase
Clifford-Spezza-Simmonds

 

[Obo]

....but he was the only guy I saw on my tv screen when they scored. Doesn't that make it his fault?

Heh. My rule of thumb is that the last defender you see desperately scrambling to stop a goal from being scored is almost never the same guy that screwed up to cause the chance in the first place.

 

[Eternal Leaf]

To be fair, Dubas’ other good summer pickups offset to a degree this uselessness.

Yeah, it's hard to go 100%.

He hit on Bunting, Kase, and Kampf which is incredible work.

 

[Fogelhund]

Massively disappointed. Thought he was going to be a great add. That said, he adds a much needed element of toughness imo. We have added players that play fearless and harder than what we're used to seeing (Bunting, Kase)...but I still think we need a guy who is "drop the mitts" tough. That said, I think Clifford is better served for this team, at a cheaper cost, than Ritchie. Clifford can PK as well, and certainly skates much better. Engvall comes out for me, if this was the start of the playoffs. Playoff lineup up front:
Bunting-Matthews-Marner
Kerfoot-Tavares-Nylander
Mikheyev-Kampf-Kase
Clifford-Spezza-Simmonds

Sure... some toughness, but one fight, and didn't even fight in the Winnipeg game... Simmonds and Clifford at least stood up that game...

 

[showtime8]

I can't imagine anyone claiming Ritchie, but the league does seem to have an obsession with claiming Toronto's cast-offs.

I would think that teams would be more inclined to wait until he hits the AHL so they can loan him to the AHL in the future. More flexibility.

 

[zeke]

Ritchie has been significantly better than Clifford.

Clifford has like a 40% xGF% this year despite having the softest usage on the team by far. How he has even earned 8 games with us is beyond me at this point... Especially with how well Joey Anderson has played with the Marlies and in his two games with the Leafs this year.

Ritchie: 49.6xgf% (-6.1rel), -4.2dzs%
Clifford: 46.1xgf% (-6.6rel), -1.3dzs%

pretty similar overall impacts for these two, once you factor in usage.

And more importantly - they accomplished this in very different ways.

Ritchie just had bad offensive and bad defensive numbers. Clifford had horrendous offensive numbers, but legit excellent defensive numbers. This matches my eye test - Clifford can actually skate at the nhl level and understands how to be responsible defensively, even if he's completely useless offensively.

Of the 13 forwards with 50+ 5v5 minutes:

Offense:

Ritchie: 2.54xgf/60 (#11), -3.5rel (#11)
Clifford: 1.68xgf/60 (#13), -9.8rel (#13)

Defense (the lower the Rel the better for defense):

Ritchie: 2.58xga/60 (#12), +2.6 (#12)
Clifford: 1.96xga/60 (#1), -3.2 (#2)


Overall similar impact on the ice this year, but Ritchie does it be being bad at everything while Clifford does it while at least being very responsible defensively, which for a 4th line goon is something. Especially when the caphit is so different.

 

[TheScandal89]

Question, did we have to waive him for cap reasons? I liked the idea of keeping him around for the playoff run. I expect him to get claimed because of his draft position and fairly low cap hit.

 

[zeke]

Just to add to this, I don't recall the old windbag claiming Ritchie was going to be better than Willie, he was angry that instead of drafting a big North American player the Leafs took a skilled (reading between the lines: & soft) European.

how is this better?

he wanted the leafs to draft the worse player becuase he wasnt a euro?

 

[PromisedLand]

I think Ritchie's skating did no favors.
He just couldn't get anywhere fast enough.
Clifford is better because he can skate well enough to be a depth player.

Perhaps he'd be better on a more physical, methodical, less skilled team?

In modern NHL there is no place for slow skaters. I recall the spittin chicklet interview with Crosby where he was asked what does he do to train in the offseason.

Crosby said (paraphrasing): "Game has gotten fast. One has to keep up with the speed of the game, especially with younger guys skating really fast. So I focus on keeping up with the speed of the game. If you can't skate then you are toast in today's game."

 

[Fogelhund]

Question, did we have to waive him for cap reasons? I liked the idea of keeping him around for the playoff run. I expect him to get claimed because of his draft position and fairly low cap hit.

Looks like cap space is the reason it was done now, though really he hasn't been very useful.

 

[hockeywiz542]

Question, did we have to waive him for cap reasons? I liked the idea of keeping him around for the playoff run. I expect him to get claimed because of his draft position and fairly low cap hit.

Maple Leafs place Nick Ritchie on waivers; William Nylander rockets up scoring leaders | Toronto Sun

Nick Ritchie’s lack of production with the Maple Leafs has come at a cost.

On Thursday, the Leafs placed Ritchie, who has one goal and seven assists in 30 games after signing a two-year, $5-million US contract with Toronto last summer, on waivers.

If Ritchie clears on Friday, the expectation is that the winger will be assigned to the taxi squad and not be sent to the Toronto Marlies.

In the event that Ritchie is not claimed by another National Hockey League club, the Leafs would save $1.125-million in cap space by having him on the taxi squad.

It doesn’t help Ritchie that the Leafs are healthy as they prepare to head out on a four-game trip that starts on Saturday in Denver against the Colorado Avalanche. The Leafs need every dollar they can find under the cap right now.

If another team takes a shot with Ritchie, his cap hit of $2.5 million for this season and next, of course, would come off the books.

A source indicated that the Leafs don’t have much interest in losing Ritchie. It’s a business decision, but had Ritchie produced with some regularity, the Leafs wouldn’t have made the move.

Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe has gone to lengths to support Ritchie in his media availabilities, including this past weekend, when the big winger was a healthy scratch against the Ottawa Senators.

With winger Ondrej Kase nursing a minor injury, Ritchie got back into the lineup against the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday. In the first period, Ritchie was late to check Brendan Perlini, who scored the Oilers’ first goal on the play.