2024 NHL Draft player profile: Ryder Ritchie, Prince Albert Raiders

Ryder Ritchie is buzzing.

Fresh off of the 2024 NHL Scouting Combine, where he met with a whopping 30 teams, the Prince Albert Raiders star is counting the days until he hears his name called at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nev. at the upcoming NHL Entry Draft.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” Ritchie said. “Excitement, little nerves, you just never know what’s going to happen. It’s pretty much a free-for-all. It’s been a dream of mine since I was a little kid and it’s going to be hard to keep off my mind for the next couple days here.”

The winger entered the 2023-24 season with a lot to build on after being named the 2023 WHL Rookie of the Year thanks to a 20-goal, 35-assist campaign.

Ritchie seemed poised to surpass those numbers until sustaining a lower-body injury in December 2023 that would keep him out of action for two months and miss out on participating in the 2024 Kubota CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game.

“Missing out on Top Prospects was really too bad for him,” Raiders Head Coach Jeff Truitt said. “But I thought that when he came back and the games got more important, he stepped up and he was tremendous.”

After returning from injury, Ritchie put up 13 points in his final 13 regular season matches, sitting second among his Raiders teammates in goals (six) and plus/minus (+5) over that stretch.

All told, the Kelowna, B.C. product closed out a truncated campaign with 19 goals (including two game-winners) and 25 assists for 44 points in 47 games.

But was there a chance that teams forgot just how good Ryder Ritchie was because of his absence?

If they had, he put any doubters on notice in the first game of the 2024 WHL Playoffs.

Ritchie corraled a bouncing puck and ripped it past the Saskatoon Blades netminder to give Prince Albert its first lead of the postseason and added an assist on the game-winning goal in the final frame for an eventual 4-3 victory over the regular-season champions.

The Blades would go on to claim the series victory, but Ritchie showed off his dangerous shot and found the scoresheet in all five matches, registering three goals and five assists.

“He elevated his game against Saskatoon, you could see the next level he got to,” Truitt added. “Confidence with the puck, his agility, his evasiveness around players. You talk about his release, his release is off the charts. He can shoot the puck better than a lot of players, but sometimes people don’t really realize that he does things with the puck to help his teammates.”

The early playoff exit allowed the 17-year-old to showcase his game on the international stage at the 2024 IIHF World U-18 Championship in Finland.

Ritchie tallied four goals and four assists in seven games en route to a gold medal finish for Team Canada- notably, he scored a goal and an assist in both the semifinal match against Sweden and in a comeback victory against the United States in the title match.

“We had such a special group of guys,” Ritchie said of the experience. “The way we won coming back against the U.S., it was out of a movie. It was awesome. Having the gold medal and winning a world championship is a dream. Representing your country is something that I’m really proud of. It definitely gave me some confidence going to the Combine.”

Ritchie is ranked 19th among North American skaters in NHL Central Scouting’s final report ahead of the draft.

He’ll have his parents- his dad is former NHLer and 1997 WHL Champion Byron Ritchie, siblings, grandparents and billet parents from Prince Albert on hand at the Sphere when he walks the stage and shakes the hands of the NHL brass that selected him.

The 2024 NHL Entry Draft runs from June 28-29.