I've seen them both play in junior in person. Different players, Kassian was essentially a skilled goon - fought, went out of his way for big hits, but never seemed to be the best player on his team. You could see how much bigger her was than everybody else on the ice but I wasn't all that enamoured with him. This was in 2010 when he was with the Petes.ClamRussel wrote:I said that, usually w/ power forwards like this it takes longer to arrive at their potential than pure skilled forwards. It takes patience for proper development, it's not a criticism. Kassian needed to work on his conditioning as well, his skills were always there. Coaches wanted a more responsible error free game from him which is reasonable. Do you see Ritchie as sound defensively? Can he step in at 20? How effective would he be playing w/ men as a 19 or 20 yr old? What I was getting at was I saw him as a player who might take a few years to hit his stride. Kassian looked pretty damn good in junior as well, he's starting to look like that in the NHL consistently at 23. Most online opinions are based on limited tv or highlight videos. You've seen Ritchie multiple times so you'd have better insight on him than most.Diehard1 wrote:Ritchie is much more polished - I don't know who said he was a project like Kass but they are wrong. He's likely not ready for the league yet but that's mostly because he needs work on his conditioning, not his skills as much.
Guess we will see - still Ritchie as my pick assuming the top 5 stay as is, followed by Nylander who is looking very good at the u18s. Ehlers and Virtanen are the next two and there's some distance in my mind.
Ritchie I've only seen live once, the rest on tv. He makes much more of an impact, to me looks like a guy who carries his team as the best player by a fair margin, but he does it in a skilled way. To me, he's a skilled player who fights where as Kassian was the opposite. Ritchie looks even bigger than Kassian did, an ox on skates. He definitely has more power in his stride than Kassian did at the same age, not sure he will ever be there in top speed given his size but when you're 230 you don't need to have that much top end speed. His acceleration and lateral movement are very good for a guy his size.
As for his defence, I didn't notice it that much mostly because I wasn't paying particular attention to it. He seems to know where to be but like any young player I'm sure he's going to have to work on it. He does seem to coast at times which I think is mostly a conditioning thing, will probably need a year more in junior before he's ready for a shot at the roster. Maybe even a year in the AHL, depends on how his game matures but the talent is definitely there.