Cal Ritchie

Then Braden Shen finds Callum Ritchie, your guy, Scott.

He shows off some great patience, and Cal Ritchie scores his first this season, ties the game at two.

But late in the period, about three minutes to go, Rangers on the power play.

It's Gabe Perreault with a gorgeous feed to Oliver Bjorkstrand, scores his second as a Ranger, second of the game to make it 3-2.

Like I'm, you know, awesome." And so he had a great game.

Uh, of course I did not play him, but my point of playing alongside Cal Ritchie and at the time Matias Maccelli, an omni top power play featuring Matthew Schaefer, Brayden Schenn should never be below 4K in that stam- that situation.

You know, he's gonna get his fair share of the power play shots.

He's probably gonna get more of them than last year when he got like 22% of the shots after, uh, his trade to the Islanders playing on the power play one with Schaefer.

Um, and at five on five, he's way more of a rate shooter than Cal Ritchie and Maccelli.

Now, it's Victor Eklund on his wing who like is even higher upside as a playmaker I think than Maccelli.

Uh, based on what we know will be a similarly low volume shot taker.

First of all, there was balance, and that is always important.

I love the idea of Braden Shen being on a line with the two kids, Cal Ritchie and Victor Eklund.

You get an experienced guy playing with two youngsters.

It adds stability.

So again, the kids are all right.

And Eklund does the job there.

Cal Ritchie had an assist.

He was a plus two.

I mean, I would love to see Eklund get some top six minutes for a few games if Farsi misses some time.

And maybe Cal Ritchie steps up into a bigger role, which again, he's expected to be a two C eventually, but he's probably not starting there right now.

And let's let Barzy heal, get better.

And, and hopefully he comes back better than ever.

he coughs up the puck and it goes back the other way and if it goes through shaper more than barzal maybe that is a little bit of an advantage not that i want barzy off the power play i just don't want him to be the guy touching the puck all the time and if the boar is able to get more motion and moving the puck and moving without the puck Then maybe you can go from 30th to 22nd or 21st in the league.

The thing they still lack, though, and you need someone to replace Lee in front of the net.

That's one thing, because, you know, is it going to be Cal Ritchie? Is it going to be Braden Shen? Is it going to be somebody else? We don't know.

But you need somebody to play that role.

Okay.

Um, but, you know, with Barzal coming back hopefully soon, something to watch is Cal Ritchie actually did play well last night.

He didn't look great.

Yeah, I thought he was pretty good.

I thought he had a really good game.

Um, Cal Ritchie I thought looked dynamic at times, maybe trying to do a little too much when they were down two-nothing.

Victor Eklund made his NHL debut cross-checking John Tavares in the first period, leading to a power play goal.

Didn't bother me.

I just wanna see a player that benefited a lot from the power play last year.

I wanna see him settle in, find his game at the center position in the NHL in the top six, and win his minutes at five-on-five, which I think he did pretty well last night.

So promising signs from Cal Ritchie and Victor Eklund.

Um, Emil Heineman scored the only goal of the game on just a gorgeous play by, uh, Bo Horvat skating up the ice, pulling up on the dime, hitting, uh, Heineman, who was skating over 20 miles per hour to get to the front of the net.

Victor Eklund made the lineup.

Cal Ritchie's in the, the top six.

What are your, what are the goals and the direction of this year's Islanders team?

Well, I think they're, they're trying to figure out, um, which, which players from, from the old guard are, are gonna be able to, you know, help usher in the, the new era, which is the Schaefer era of, of the Islanders, really.

So, um, you'd love to have him there on opening night.

You know, that being said, um, you know, I think it gives a couple other guys, couple new guys a chance to, um, get in there and show what they've got, chew up some ice time.

Probably gives Cal Ritchie more ice time, probably gives Eklund more ice time, um, gives Michelli a chance to get, to get acclimated to his new group and show, show what, the Islander fans what he can do.

Um, so there's opportunity there in that void, and, and, uh, I'm pretty confident he'll be back soon enough.

Yeah, so let's get into it for the rosters being announced here today.

And for forwards, it's Casey Sezikis, Anthony Duclair, Victor Eklund, Emil Heinemann, Simon Holmstrom, Beau Horvath, Matthias Michelli, Kyle McLean, Jean-Gabriel Pajot, Andres Palat, Kyle Palmieri, Cal Ritchie, and Brayden Shen on the forwards.

Not a great forward lineup.

And if Barzell's not on there, he's on like an injured reserve thing, non-injury reserve.

His skating looked good, which was the biggest worry, but the hands were a little iffy.

Some bad decisions here and there, but could just be getting back into the groove of the game.

Cal Ritchie was the biggest disappointment for me in preseason.

He looked really, really bad after coming off of, you know, the end of the season where he looked really, really good.