Capitals’ Ridley Proves the NHL Scouts Wrong

For Mike Ridley, there have been plenty of rejection slips along the way to becoming an NHL All Star.

He was cut from his junior hockey team when he was 17. He was passed over by the Canadian Olympic team four years later and ignored by the NHL draft every year in between.

“It’s something I can always think about and say, ‘Look at what I did and I never was drafted. I proved a lot of people wrong,’ “Ridley said. “When I was playing at Tier II (Canada’s Junior A hockey), an NHL Central Scout came to rate guys and I guess I wasn’t rated that high.”

Scoring a goal and an assist in this year’s NHL All-Star game and playing most of this year as the Washington Capitals’ leading scorer, the 25-year-old native of Winnipeg is getting rated pretty high these days.

“I’ve heard the term late bloomer before,” Ridley said. “I was always the top scorer on my (junior) team, but wasn’t always the best in my league.”

Ridley made the New York Rangers as a free agent four years ago and has improved in each of his four NHL seasons.

“He’s come a long way since the Rangers’ camp,” said Washington left wing Kelly Miller, who came to the Capitals with Ridley from the Rangers in a New Year’s Day trade two years ago.

“I think he’s one of the best centers in the league,” Miller said. “Mike really has come on this year, but I’ve always seen signs of it. There would be times (in previous seasons) where Mike would go into spells where he’s been a little frustrated.”

That may come from all those high-scoring years in junior hockey that went unrewarded.

After being cut as a 17-year-old, Ridley made the St. Boniface Saints of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League the next year, but only after switching from center to left wing. The following year, he blossomed.

“When I was 19, that’s when I really came on. I broke some of Bobby Clarke’s scoring records,” Ridley said.

Ridley scored 91 goals and had 99 assists for 190 points in 48 games with St. Boniface in 1982-83. All three scoring totals still stand as league records.

“Sometimes at Tier II, people thought I might be drafted but it never happened,” Ridley said. “ . . . If I was drafted at the time it would have been the greatest thing. . . . When I was 14 or 15, a friend of mine’s brother, he was drafted by the Islanders and I’d look at him and go, ‘Wow.’ ”

The three Major Junior hockey leagues in Canada have been considered the best source of talent. After that comes the Junior A level, which is a more local brand of competition.

Ridley said he had a chance to play for a Major Junior hockey team when he was 20, but turned it down. He chose instead to go to the University of Manitoba.

“You don’t want to give up your dreams (of playing in the NHL),” Ridley said. “You don’t want to quit trying, but it wasn’t in the front of my mind.”

Playing hockey for a Canadian university is not the place to launch a pro hockey career. “It’s not a place many (professional players) come from,” Washington Coach Bryan Murray said.

In the midst of a two-year career in which he was named Canada’s College Player of the Year and scored 68 goals in 76 games at Manitoba, Ridley was one of four players invited to try out for the last spot on the Canadian Olympic team. Ridley wound up one of the other three.

“It seemed like there was a day difference between (Canadian Olympic Coach Dave) King telling me, ‘No, we don’t want you’ and when Reg Higgs called and asked me if I’d like to try out for the New York Rangers.

“Wow. What a thing that was.”

Ridley walked into then-Ranger coach Ted Sator’s first training camp and promptly won a spot on the roster.

“It wasn’t a thing where I came in and I was so good I made the team,” Ridley said. “They took a gamble on me. I got a break in camp with the new coaches. They wanted to do an overhaul on the team. They didn’t have big centermen. I’m not huge, but I was bigger than anyone they had.”

After competing for a week with the rest of the team’s rookies, Ridley found himself a little overwhelmed.

“It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “ . . . I thought, ‘These guys are so good. Wait until the pros come in.’ Then you start seeing guys you used to watch on TV. (Former Ranger defenseman) Barry Beck and those guys walk in and you’ve got to get on the ice with them.”

Ridley went on to become the Rangers’ top rookie that year, scoring 22 goals and 65 points. After scoring 16 goals in the first 38 games of his second season, Ridley was traded to the Capitals.

“It’s January 1st. We had the day off and I was sitting around the house,” said Ridley.

Ridley got the news in a call from Rangers general manager Phil Esposito around 6 p.m. and spent the next three hours on the phone with reporters and friends.

“I got a little time to pack and get to bed,” he said. “I leave the house at seven the next morning and I never saw my place in New York again.”

This season, Ridley has already surpassed his career-high for goals scored. He scored 12 goals in a 13-game span in November and December and then logged 30 points in a 17-game spree in December and January. He scored four goals in Washington’s second game of the season and recorded a team-record six assists against Chicago on Jan. 7.

“He’s more confident and a lot stronger,” Murray said. “His strength has helped him immensely when people try to put a stick on him. . . . The big thing for Mike is he has to skate. He has to keep his feet moving.”

Murray has also seen a change in Ridley’s mental approach to the game. “He’s matured. He understands that there are 80 games and that there are going to be low points,” Murray said. “In college hockey, you have to score every night to be a star and here (in the NHL) that’s not the case.”

Ridley said his experience at the All Star game has helped.

“You go to the All Star game and you talk to the guys and they say, ‘Yeah, that’s the way it goes sometimes,” he said.

Of his improvement, Ridley said, “It’s a lot of things. It’s hard to pinpoint one thing. My confidence is probably higher than it has ever been. . . . The puck is not going in right now as much as earlier this season, but I’m getting my chances.”