There is much speculation that the Pittsburgh Penguins will be shopping for a top six winger at some point this year. What isn't known is how they will accomplish this task.
Do they use veterans like Paul Martin or Brandon Sutter to acquire the new winger?
Do they trade from their wealth of puck moving defense prospects?
What kind of winger will they get? Will he be a veteran? Will he be a younger player with upside that is cost effective?
Today I am going to focus on a player in the St. Louis Blues organization that may be caught up in a numbers game, Ty Rattie.
Rattie is a guy who loves to score goals. He scored them in bunches in junior hockey and he scores them in bunches in the AHL as well.
Problem for him is that he is stuck behind a wall of forward depth in St. Louis. The Blues boast impressive depth at that position that includes: Vladimir Tarasenko, Paul Stastny, David Backes, TJ Oshie, Patrick Berglund, Jayden Schwartz, Jori Lehtera, and fellow prospect Dmitrij Jaskin. So where does he fit into this equation? The answer is he might not.
Here is what Hockey Prospectus’
Ryan Wagman had to say about Ty Rattie in
Hockey Prospectus 2014-15:
A scoring fiend in the WHL, Ty Rattie had a strong rookie pro season, scoring 31 goals for the Chicago Wolves in the AHL and receiving his first NHL cameo, a two game stint at the tail end of the season. From his AHL numbers, we can see that Rattie loves firing the puck: his 211 shots on net were 74 more than the Wolves runner-up and 12th in the league. Between him and fellow rookie Dmitrij Jaskin, there seems to be on open right-wing spot available.
So what kind of value does Rattie have? Pretty good trade value, there would certainly be multiple teams in acquiring his services. To give Rattie’s value some perspective I looked up where he ranked in the Hockey Prospectus prospect rankings.
Ty Rattie is ranked 61st overall out of 100 NHL prospects. Pittsburgh Penguins 2014 first round draft pick Kasperi Kapanen ranks 60th overall.
But the Blues won’t be looking for another young forward for obvious reasons, perhaps a young defense prospect?
Barret Jackman is a pending UFA and if they decide to go in a different direction after this season that would create a spot for a promising young defenseman to step in.
Derrick Pouliot will certainly not be involved in a deal for Rattie, but Brian Dumoulin could.
Brian Dumoulin is ranked as Hockey Prospectus’ 57th best NHL prospect which is in the same neighborhood as Ty Rattie.
Last but certainly not least, guess who Ty Rattie’s junior coach was? None other than Penguins bench boss Mike Johnston.
You may also recognize the defenseman who is flying through the neutral zone in this highlight clip:
So, Ty Rattie, yay or nay?
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New Hockey Hurts podcast discusses the inability for players to accept clean hard body checks as well as the teams we think are off to a nice start this year. You can find the podcast
here
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