Florida signed Ritchie to a PTO for training camp

It isn’t very hard to find Brett Ritchie on the ice.

Even during the first days of Florida Panthers training camp, with more hockey players currently at the Ice Den in Coral Springs than there will be the rest of the season, the 6-foot-4, 215-pound Ritchie is easy to pick out among his peers.

A veteran of nine seasons in the NHL, Richie has established himself as a smart, hard-working forward who doesn’t shy away from the dirty areas of the ice.

Over the summer, Ritchie found himself without a contract but still with opportunities to consider.

After weighing his options, the 30-year-old decided to sign a professional try-out (PTO) with the Panthers.

Speaking to THN from inside the then-empty and echoing rink he and the rest of the Panthers had just been competing on, Ritchie explained the thought process that went into his decision to come to Florida.

“When I looked at how they played last year, the style of game that they play, that was a big part of it,” Ritchie said. “It's the system that I like.”

He was wise to have an eye on what the Panthers and their first-year head coach Paul Maurice were doing down in South Florida.

The power forward game is something Ritchie has proven he can do well, and it’s those kinds of players, if they work hard enough, that can fit well in Maurice’s systems.

“We're a very strong forechecking team, and he needs to find a place in that,” Maurice said of Ritchie. “We believe he can, it was part of the invite reasons. We had liked him over the years as a player we would consider bringing in and we had the opportunity this year. We do believe, with his hands, he moves well for a big man, he is heavy, but he can add to our forecheck and be a part of it and excel in at it.”

Beyond the on-ice attributes, there was more to signing with the Panthers that appealed to Ritchie.

One of his best friends in the NHL plays in Florida, as well as a few former teammates from in the NHL and during his junior days.

By all indications, it appears Ritchie and the Panthers were a match that was meant to be made.

“I know quite a few of the guys on the team already, whether I played with them before, grew up with them, or a lot of them are the same age as me, so I grew up playing against them,” Ritchie explained. “So I just felt like there's a familiar sort of atmosphere.”

Ritchie and Panthers winger Carter Verhaeghe go back quite a ways, to when they shared the ice with the OHL’s Niagara IceDogs in 2012.

The two Ontario natives have always kept in touch and still find time to hang out during the offseason.

Ritchie’s Florida connections don’t stop there.

He played U16 hockey with Evan Rodrigues in the Greater Toronto Hockey League for the Toronto Marlboros and played against Nick Cousins quite a bit, as the two are both from the same area and are only two weeks apart in age.

He’s also good friends with former Calgary teammates Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk, so needless to say, there were plenty of ears for him to bend about whether Florida would be a good place to continue his career.

“There's honestly a lot of guys I've either met or know really well on the team, so I was able to reach out to a few of them and get a feel for what was going on,” Ritchie said.

During those conversations, one of the topics that came up was Maurice and what it was like playing for him last season in Florida.

That information, combined with what he already knew from playing nine of his 10 NHL seasons in the Western Conference, had Ritchie feeling good about the idea of playing for Maurice.

“I played against him a lot when he was in Winnipeg. I played in Calgary and in Dallas, so same division, and I got to see a lot of his style of teams and felt like I had a pretty good feel of what he was all about,” Ritchie said.

The only question that remains is what will it take for Ritchie to turn his PTO contract into one that lasts the full NHL season?

“The exhibition games are critical for him,” said Maurice. “We've got four or five players on the ice right now that physicality and edge is a big part of their game, which is difficult to show in the first four or five days of camp because I don't want them really taking somebody heavy into the boards to show the fact, I know he can hit, I know he will hit. The exhibition games are just (about the players) defining themselves.”

Florida’s first preseason games are on Monday when they’ll host the Nashville Predators for a split-squad doubleheader at Amerant Bank Arena. Ritchie will play in one of those games, and probably one or both of the Panthers home-and-home with the Carolina Hurricanes the following Wednesday and Friday.

Ritchie will be one for us to keep an eye on.

Fortunately, he won’t be hard to spot when on the ice.