Is Gavin McKenna going WHL or NCAA? Ex-Canuck Byron Ritchie helping him decide

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Seventeen years after his final NHL game with the Vancouver Canucks, Byron Ritchie’s hockey resume is still adding layers.

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The 47-year-old from North Delta played pro hockey for 21 seasons. That included eight campaigns in the NHL, with the last one with his hometown Canucks in 2007-08.

These days, he is a skills coach at Kelowna’s Rink Academy, and part of the player development team for Creative Artists Agency Hockey, the company headed up by player agents J.P. Barry and Pat Brisson and one whose client list features Canucks Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson and Tyler Myers.

Ritchie is also the family adviser for Gavin McKenna, the hotshot 17-year-old Medicine Hat Tigers forward who was already the consensus No. 1 prospect for the 2026 NHL Draft even before he made Team Canada for this past world junior tournament.

McKenna is from Whitehorse, and lived with Ritchie and his family when he went to Rink Academy for two seasons. McKenna’s teammates in Medicine Hat include winger Ryder Ritchie, Byron’s 18-year-old son and a celebrated prospect himself, considering he was a second-round pick last summer of the Minnesota Wild.

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The development path for the players is undergoing a remake after the NCAA announced in the fall that players from Major Junior leagues like the WHL would be eligible to compete in the American collegiate system for the first time next season.

McKenna is the test case for this new hockey world. There are rumours already about him going to the NCAA. He would bring instant profile to the rebooted system. He falls to next season’s NHL Draft because of his December birthday.

The NCAA is also now permitting Name Image Likeness (NIL) contracts, which sees athletes make money from personal sponsorship deals. There are reports of Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning bringing in $6.6 million US a season. Hockey won’t have that type of cash at play, and Canadians have to do their NIL deals on this side of the border, but McKenna would certainly land something substantial if he goes that route.

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The Medicine Hat Tigers were one of the teams that applied to host next season’s Memorial Cup national championship tournament. They lost out to Kelowna Rockets, but the WHL has announced that the Tigers will play two preseason games in Whitehorse next September, and that is certainly not a random coincidence

Helping McKenna navigate through all this is a part of what’s on Ritchie’s to-do list these days.

“Gavin’s an extended part of our family,” Ritchie said. “He’s lived here. He’s here in the summer for training. Ryder and him live together in Medicine Hat. We’re all very close.

“(The NCAA opportunity) is obviously there. It’s a viable option for him. We haven’t exposed him to any schools yet, just because we’re trying to limit distractions and keep his feet where they are and focus on this season.

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“He was 14 when he first played with Medicine Hat. The things he’s done in the league already … I don’t worry because he’s so driven, but I do worry about the competition. I worry about the year after, the going from playing 2009s, 2008s and 2007s (16 to 18 year olds) if he stays, to playing the following year against men who are trying to feed their families and where every puck battle is life or death. That would be a big shock. It’s a massive step from the Western League to the NHL. Can you ease that transition by having him playing next year against 22 and 23 year olds?

“There’s a lot of eyes on what he’s going to do next year, for sure. At the end of the day, it has to be his decision. Whatever decision he makes, we are going to support him. He has to be wholeheartedly behind whatever his decision is and not have any doubts or fears and not look back at all.”

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Ritchie grew up playing minor hockey in North Delta and some of his earliest hockey tales involve supporting the Canucks, as you’d expect for someone from the Lower Mainland. Ritchie was 14 when his mother Bonnie bought them tickets for Pavel Bure’s first game with the Canucks, and Ritchie remembers thinking after that Nov. 5, 1991 match-up against the Winnipeg Jets that “nobody had seen anyone skate like that, with that speed. … I was a big Russian Rocket fan.” Ritchie was hooked on the Canucks’ 1994 run to the Stanley Cup Finals, too, when Vancouver was led by the likes Bure and Trevor Linden.

The following summer Ritchie was a seventh-round draft pick of the Hartford Whalers, coming off his second season with the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes. Then came two 50-goal seasons with Lethbridge, along with helping the team to an appearance in the 1997 Memorial Cup national tournament.

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Ritchie had to transition to more of a pesky, energy type forward at the pro ranks. The Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes along the way, and they dealt Ritchie to the Florida Panthers in January 2002, where he became a teammate of Bure’s.

Ritchie got to play alongside Linden with the Canucks in that 2007-08 campaign after signing on in Vancouver following two seasons with the Calgary Flames. Ritchie had three goals and 11 points in 71 games with the Canucks.

He moved to playing in Europe from there, with stints in Switzerland, Russia and Sweden. He had met his wife Maria Johannson — sister of former NHLer Andreas Johansson — while playing in Sweden during the 2004-05 NHL lockout, and finished his playing career there in 2016-17 with Andreas as his coach for Modo, the club in Örnsköldsvik, which counts Daniel and Henrik Sedin as well as Markus Naslund hometown products.

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Ritchie talks about how there are “outdoor rinks everywhere,” and “ice available all day, every day,” in Örnsköldsvik. He wanted to play in Russia because he studied the old Central Red Army teams and their systems, and he talks about how training camp for the season started in July and how “intense” the hockey was.

He can come at player development from a variety of ways.

“I’m very grateful for all the experiences that I’ve had. Those experiences have given me much more knowledge for the industry that I’m in now,” he said. “You’ve been a first liner and a fourth liner and a healthy scratch. You’ve been in different situations in different countries and seen different styles of the game.

“Playing in the NHL in Canadian markets like Vancouver and Calgary and being able to to experience that as a Canadian kid growing up watching hockey every day is something that I’ll take forever and appreciate. You don’t appreciate it as much when you’re in the moment, but looking back it was pretty cool.”

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Medicine Hat, who are coached by former Canucks bench boss Willie Desjardins, finished atop the WHL’s Eastern Conference standings at 47-17-3-1, and they are currently in a first-round playoff series with the Swift Current Broncos.

McKenna was their leading scorer in league play, with 41 goals and 129 points. Ryder Ritchie was third, thanks to his 61 points, including 29 goals. He’s a 6-foot-1, 185-pound winger who has represented Canada at both the Under-18 worlds and the Under-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup.

Ryder is the oldest of three siblings, with a younger sister and a younger brother. Milani, 16, is a soccer player. Sidney is 11. He’s a hockey player. And, yes, he’s named after Sidney Crosby.

“Is it harder or easier knowing what you know? I think it’s harder because you know what it takes and you know how quickly you can go from prospect to suspect,” Ritchie said of being a hockey dad with a background. “You know the hockey business. And, when it comes down to it, it’s ruthless. It’s next man up.

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“Being a hockey parent has its ups and downs, but, of course, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s been so much fun, with things like following Ryder playing for Canada. He’s been able to have some amazing experiences and to be able to follow him around with my wife and ride his coattails has been awesome.”

Ritchie doesn’t have to go far if he’s looking for advice on raising hockey-playing sons. Creative Artists Agency’s player development department is headed up by Jim Hughes, the father of Quinn and the New Jersey Devils duo of Jack and Luke Hughes.

Jim has worked in various capacities in hockey, including as director of player development for Toronto Maple Leafs. The families have become connected enough that Ryder has made trips to Michigan to be a part of the Hughes’ off-season training group.

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“It’s incredible to me how good those three boys are but they’ve grown up with amazing mentors in Jim and Ellen,” Ritchie said of the Hughes brothers and their parents. “Just the way they all approach life and everyday situations is something.

“Jim and Ellen have three amazing boys: humble, massive hearts, ultimate teammates, so dialled into what they want to do with their careers. They care. That’s the best way to describe it.”

Ritchie leaned on Jim regarding player development from Jim, and maintains that “every time you talk to him you come away from it smarter.”

Canuck fans can appreciate that, looking at how good Quinn has been the past couple of years especially.

“It’s the power, the explosion, the ice in his veins to walk the line when 98 per cent of the d-men in the league would just put the puck back in the corner because they’d be so scared,” Ritchie said of Quinn. “I was going to say that he’s a top-five player in the world right now but it’s probably more like a top-three player. If there was a higher league he’d be in it.”

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Ritchie likes where the game is headed with the growing speed and skill aspects to it. He does wonder if it wouldn’t benefit from larger rinks “because you watch what a guy like a William Nylander does now and you know there’s no time and space out there when he’s doing it.”

And, yes, he does think about what it might have been like if the current development tools were in place when he was coming through the ranks as a player.

“These kids are lucky with the knowledge, the video, the nutrition, the workouts they have,” he says. “They have every resource at their feet. It’s a matter of how bad they want it and how much they’re willing to use the resources.”

sewen@postmedia.com

@steve-ewen.bsky.social

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