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Ray Whitney

Scorers-by-necessity: A look at secondary scorers providing first line points

Michael Ryder is having a career year with the Dallas Stars. This is a surprise, though it really shouldn’t have been.

When Ryder signed a two-year deal last summer with the Stars worth $3.5 million annually, he elevated himself from a third-line, secondary scorer on a Boston Bruins team with plenty of offensive weapons, to a first-line winger on a team that was losing star forward, Brad Richards, to free agency. Ryder was expected to become a primary scorer, a signing that would essentially have to replace the same point production that was lost when Richards left for the New York Rangers.

That’s right—Ryder, who surpassed 60 points only once, his rookie year in 2003-04 with Montreal, was supposed to replace the production of Richards, a player who’s only had one season out of ten under 60 points, an injury-plagued year in 2008-09 where he played only 56 games.

No surprise, then, that Ryder has 35 goals and 27 assists for 62 points with Dallas while Richards has 24 goals and 37 assists for 61 points with New York in the same amount of games played. Funny how that happens.

Mike Ribeiro’s Future, Horton Trade Rumors, and Souray to the Sharks?

Nathan Horton (Joe Loong/WikiCommons)

[Crashing the Crease is The Hockey Writers rundown of news, notes, and analysis from around the NHL]

EASTERN CONFERENCE:

~ As expected, it looks like Ray Whitney won’t be back in Carolina next season. (With the writing on the wall at the trade deadline, it makes me wonder why GM Jim Rutherford didn’t just take what he could get):

“I think it will be difficult with where he will be at, contract-wise,” Rutherford said. “I expect him to go into July (and the free-agent market). It appears that’s the way it’s going to go.”

~ With new bench bosses in Tampa and Columbus, Atlanta hopes to narrow down their remaining options:

The key deadline is July 1st when free agency begins–players want to know who will be in charge of their ice time and their role within the squad. The one advantage of hiring a coach early in the summer is that it gives him more time to review game tapes from the prior year and think about how to plan for the next season.

~ THW’s Dave Poleck dove headfirst into the Nathan Horton trade rumors last week, and ESPN’s Pierre Lebrun is suggesting he may not be the only big name heading out of Florida in the coming days:

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