Waived: Nick Ritchie on Waivers (Cleared)

[3074326]

Why’d they sign this guy? Never really made much sense to me. But I’m not an expert with this particular team..

Also, what in the actual f*** is going on with the ads on mobile? Holy shit. My screen re-sizes constantly because of stupid ads. The site is almost unusable on my phone.

 

[Blowfish]

So Leaf fans were wrong after Leaf camp?

 

[Cup or Bust]

He would be an upgrade for Edmonton's bottom 6 compared to some of the guys they have there.

 

[Guttersniped]

Whoever said he wasn't good enough for top 6 and not energetic enough for the bottom 6 is spot on. He's a guy who's probably too good for the AHL but doesn't have a spot in the NHL.

Occasionally he provides some good hits, can fight, can score nice goals from time to time, and kind of found a niche in front of the net on the PP last year before the Hall trade displaced him from the first unit. Krejci dragged him to some goal scoring opportunities too.

I wouldn't line up to take him back, but I would say you could do a lot worse than him if your roster is thin or you need bodies due to injury. The real shame for Boston is they traded Danton Heinen for him, who's gone to Pittsburgh and on pace for a career year production-wise.

Pittsburgh getting the most out of a random forward with good hockey IQ who fits their profile is about as surprising as the sun rising.

 

[krutovsdonut]

In no way is a 2.5 million dollar player a high profile signing

i guess i have suddenly misunderestimated his importance to leaf fans.

just yesterday he was the first player listed in a leafs fan's proposal on this board to trade for chycrun and crouse, but i guess that was yesterday. today he's a minor signing and waiving him is a no lose situation. go leaf fans!

 

[bossram]

Richie was for size/truculence blah blah blah.

If they just added an analytics darling like Bunting (and a risky boom/bust in Kase) everyone would have bitched about how the soft weak Leafs were now even softer without Hyman. Ritchie was a net front presence for the PP. Not everyone is a play driver by the way, some just get dragged along and score goals.

I’m not suggesting Ritchie was promising to bring much of that with him, much less was a good idea at the time, but I assume that element was a selling point. It wasn’t that much money to risk either.

I’m only quibbling because it seems like a minor misstep in a successful off-season, and one made for typical and understandable reasons, yet it gets a lot of criticism. You’re main points aren’t wrong, we don’t have to drag this out.

I’m also sure it’s more annoying and may stick out more for Leaf fans because they actually had to watch the guy play in 30 games.

Again I agree, not a massive mistake on the whole. But investing $2.5 million x 2 years, on a guy who isn't even one of your 12 best forwards, when you're a cap-strapped club, is just a bad decision.

And regarding the bolded, this was only a selling point to people who've literally never watched Ritchie play and whose only impressions of him are from Don Cherry rants. Ritchie is not a tough player and never was. His play style is more of a "perimeter player" than a guy who mixes it up near the net. And the PIMs come from being slow to the play and taking hooking/holding calls, not roughing guys up.

I kinda feel like the Ritchie signing really was just to appease the frothing-mouthed mob and MSM.

 

[CDJ]

I don’t understand the notion that the signing was a financial disaster, its a short term contract for a guy who in an ideal world could be a physical PF. That’s a very valued commodity. I understand why Toronto did it at the money they did it at. He either continues what he does and you lose nothing but short money or the change of scenery makes him pop and all of a sudden you have something of pretty substantial value

 

[I am Canadian]

It's crazy how tight the cap is that it will be near impossible to find a team to take on only 2.5M

 

[The Marquis]

Plenty of those teams at the bottom of the standings have loads of cap space.

 

[GirardSpinorama]

That 2.5 mill next year would really come in handy to give raises to Kase or more importantly Campbell.

 

[BrannigansLaw]

i guess i have suddenly misunderestimated his importance to leaf fans.

just yesterday he was the first player listed in a leafs fan's proposal on this board to trade for chycrun and crouse, but i guess that was yesterday. today he's a minor signing and waiving him is a no lose situation. go leaf fans!

How many times does it need to be explained that the Leafs would need to shed cap to make those players fit. Use your brain.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

i guess i have suddenly misunderestimated his importance to leaf fans.

just yesterday he was the first player listed in a leafs fan's proposal on this board to trade for chycrun and crouse, but i guess that was yesterday. today he's a minor signing and waiving him is a no lose situation. go leaf fans!

I can't speak for anyone else but me I didn't make those proposals as far as I'm concerned he either gets claimed and they clear up some cap space for deadline additions.

Or he goes to the taxi squad and becomes an option in case of injury, if your forward group is deep enough to have Nick Ritchie as a potential Taxi squad option that's not a bad situation.

Either way all good as far as I'm concerned

 

[Dr Pepper]

A high profile 2.5 million signing. You sir are stretching that term to its max.

Stretched it further than Ritchie did, at least.

 

[McGarnagle]

Pittsburgh getting the most out of a random forward with good hockey IQ who fits their profile is about as surprising as the sun rising.

Heinen is a guy whose raw numbers are modest but his peripherals are off the damn chart. Advanced stats told you that he made the lines he skated on better, even if he's a 30-something point player. He got a lot of time on the top line RW in 2018-19 when Pastrnak fell out of the taxi and broke his thumb, and when Pasta returned there were serious debates because all the advanced stats showed that Bergeron and Marchand were performing a lot better and the line was more efficient as a whole with Heinen than with Pastrnak (eventually Heinen found a home with Coyle and Johanssen on the third line which had a good playoff run). He had a pretty bad year in 2020 and was in a slump, and Sweeney gave up on him too quickly IMO and was chasing size in reaction to the perception that the Blues had pushed the Bruins around the previous year. But it ended up being a flop for them as Ritchie didn't provide anything and he hampered the rest of his line as they had to make up for his skating deficiencies, plus he's the inverse of Heinen in hockey IQ, not much upstairs, takes a lot of unnecessary unforced penalties - it's one thing to hook a guy who just burned by you on defense (and he takes those too), but many of his penalties are just slashing a guy for no reason along the boards or a glove to the face away from the play or after the whistle. If he would just learn to hold that in check it might extend his NHL career, but he's a net liability as it is.

 

[TheHudlinator]

Pitlick for Ritchie

Pass I'd rather have 2.5 million in cap space next year and no Pitlick

 

[glenbuis]

It's happened before.

Case in point Kyle Clifford, Calvin Picard

i believe there are other advantages to not claiming and instead trading for him . the return wouldn't be much though if anything

 

[Guttersniped]

Again I agree, not a massive mistake on the whole. But investing $2.5 million x 2 years, on a guy who isn't even one of your 12 best forwards, when you're a cap-strapped club, is just a bad decision.

And regarding the bolded, this was only a selling point to people who've literally never watched Ritchie play and whose only impressions of him are from Don Cherry rants. Ritchie is not a tough player and never was. His play style is more of a "perimeter player" than a guy who mixes it up near the net. And the PIMs come from being slow to the play and taking hooking/holding calls, not roughing guys up.

I kinda feel like the Ritchie signing really was just to appease the frothing-mouthed mob and MSM.

I think you’re right there and some of the calls might have been coming from inside the house (as in somewhere in the organization) but that’s hockey for you.

Bunting was a (super-fun) unknown based on analytics and Kampf was a defensive forward from a terrible defensive team. I’m a Devils fan who watched Kase go down like a sack of potatoes after not much of a collision and then heard how he only made it through ~6 minutes of a game 4 months later, so I thought Kase was a depressingly risky signing that wouldn’t work out.

So I get why a big strapping young forward with 15 goals/26 points in 56 games, and reported untapped potential, on the cheap, was a sort of acceptable “Hyman replacement”. And I just don’t know how this is a notable mistake in a world where Edmonton’s and Vancouver’s off-seasons exist. (As a neutral fan.)

 

[TheBeastCoast]

The tears in this thread are wild.

Tears? Because you have shown your whole ass in this thread? Yes it is very funny. Everyone swings and misses once and a while little fella.

 

[krutovsdonut]

How many times does it need to be explained that the Leafs would need to shed cap to make those players fit. Use your brain.

lol, how much of my post did you actually read?

the fact i quoted a really bad trade proposal by a leaf fan when discussing a ridiculous damage control statement about a leaf player made by another leaf fan, does not mean i think any of the things leaf fans post on hfboards have any validity. so i'll keep on using my brain thanks, which tells me that an amazing whoosh of a comment by a third leaf fan does not change the fact that $1.5m of dead cap for the leafs in respect of a brand new signing is not a "no lose" situation for the leafs.

 

[TheBeastCoast]

well measured by the sportnet coverage, he was a big signing.

Completely irrelevant.

 

[krutovsdonut]

I can't speak for anyone else but me I didn't make those proposals as far as I'm concerned he either gets claimed and they clear up some cap space for deadline additions.

Or he goes to the taxi squad and becomes an option in case of injury, if your forward group is deep enough to have Nick Ritchie as a potential Taxi squad option that's not a bad situation.

Either way all good as far as I'm concerned

i mean that is $1.5m in dead cap for two years on a team gasping for cap space on a signing that is only 30 games old, but ok.

 

[HandshakeLineRespect]

Go to the Chychrun thread, or the Ekane thread, or scroll up in this thread...

Don't be disingenuous. Hes not a "main" piece, he's a roster player going the other way in a trade due to cap implications. That's like a standard piece in most trades, the value is in the other components.

 

[Bevans]

i guess i have suddenly misunderestimated his importance to leaf fans.

just yesterday he was the first player listed in a leafs fan's proposal on this board to trade for chycrun and crouse, but i guess that was yesterday. today he's a minor signing and waiving him is a no lose situation. go leaf fans!

Interesting that all of the people who have been in the Chychrun thread hold this belief. Very strange.

 

[Bevans]

Don't be disingenuous. Hes not a "main" piece, he's a roster player going the other way in a trade due to cap implications. That's like a standard piece in most trades, the value is in the other components.

Again, slipping a bad contract into a trade just so it works for your team is not the same as paying someone to take on your problem.

There is charity and then there is a cap dump.

 

[krutovsdonut]

Completely irrelevant.

but if the amount of sportsnet coverage a signing gets is irrelevant to how important it is, that must mean that toronto is not the centre of the universe?

that is heresy. are you some kind of hockey copernicus?