TORONTO – Drafted by Anaheim in 2014. Traded to Boston at the 2020 deadline. Left unqualified as RFAs by the Bruins on Monday. Signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs as unrestricted free agents by the weekend.
Nick Ritchie and Ondrej Kase are two very different wingers tracing a similar path.
Now both Boston castoffs will be gunning for shifts alongside the Leafs’ superstars.
While the catch with Kase will be avoiding injury, the big, bruising Ritchie is more likely to injure.
A six-foot-two, 234-pound first-round pick, Ritchie brings more career penalty minutes (387) than games played (350) to Toronto.
But the big man can play.
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Ritchie, 25, has signed to a two-year, $5-million contract with the Maple Leafs, after meeting in-person with the organization’s staff and touring their practice facilities earlier this week.
What the Orangeville, Ont., native, 2015 world junior gold medallist and former Soo Greyhound (another one!) brings is a rugged element the Leafs’ forward core had been lacking and another low-cost option for coach Sheldon Keefe to try in his top nine.
Given the limited (and self-inflicted) price range Kyle Dubas was given to fill in around the fringes and replace the significant left wing loss of Zach Hyman, the general manager has done some nice work in securing Ritchie to go along with Kase, Michael Bunting and David Kämpf.
They’ve all accepted relatively small money to help push the big Core Four over the hump.
“It falls on me and our management team to find the pieces around the group that can contribute to having it break through,” Dubas said. “I understand why people doubt it. I don’t try to fight the doubt and the criticism of it. I think it is up to us to show we can do it. Until then, I think people having their doubts about it are completely fair.”
The light-checking Leafs are importing a forechecker a former box lacrosse champion who has averaged 2.54 hits per game in his career and is coming off his most productive goal-scoring season (15 goals in 56 games).
The rival Bruins used Ritchie for 15:22 per night in 2021, marking the highest average ice time of his career. (Ritchie’s usage was chopped to 12:02 in Boston’s two-round playoff run.)
Ritchie would be an interesting experiment in Toronto’s top six, doing some of the dirty work for Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner or John Tavares and William Nylander. Or he could settle in on a third line in need of an identity.
Eighty-two games will give a tinkerer like Keefe plenty of time to Tetris together his ideal combinations.
The internal competition will be intense.
“I always watched the Leafs. My dad’s a Leafs fan. I wasn’t like a super fan, but I always watched Saturday night the Leaf game,” Ritchie said in a 2014 interview, prior to the draft.
“It would be unbelievable to play for the Leafs.”
