Shayne Gostisbehere, Nick Ritchie reviving NHL careers with rebuilding Coyotes

On the surface, Shayne Gostisbehere and Nick Ritchie don’t have much in common.

After his first NHL season, Gostisbehere finished one spot ahead of Connor McDavid in Calder Trophy voting and was named a member of Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Meanwhile, Ritchie scored four points in 33 games as a rookie and wouldn’t reach 15 goals until his sixth NHL season, nearly eight full years after being drafted 10th overall by the Anaheim Ducks in 2014.

Gostisbehere was a third-round pick of the Philadelphia Flyers back in 2012. At 5’11” and 180 pounds, he’s relatively small for an NHL defenseman but is an excellent skater.

Ritchie (6’2″, 234 pounds) is one of the heaviest players in the league. His hometown of Orangeville, Ontario is located just an hour northwest of Toronto, the center of the hockey universe; Gostisbehere grew up in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

But Gostisbehere and Ritchie do share at least one thing — and it relates to how they both joined the Arizona Coyotes.

They were salary dumps. Emphasis on were.

These days, Gostisbehere and Ritchie look like early candidates to be among the most sought-after players at the trade deadline next March. They’re both set to hit free agency after this season and would make sense as rental players for a whole host of contending teams.

It wasn’t always this way. Prior to the start of the 2021–22 season, the Flyers gave up two draft picks (including a 2022 second-rounder) to offload the final two years of Gostisbehere’s contract, which carries a $4.5 million annual cap hit. In return, the Flyers received “future considerations” — AKA, nothing.

The Toronto Maple Leafs paid a similar price (a 2025 second) six months later to move Ritchie, who the club had previously signed for two years at a $2.5 million AAV. Ritchie hadn’t been a fit in Toronto and the Maple Leafs also received depth players Ilya Lyubushkin and Ryan Dzingel from Arizona in the trade.

Both Gostisbehere and Ritchie have since gone from being castoffs to part of the main cast with the rebuilding Coyotes.

“I lost my confidence a little there in Philly,” Gostisbehere told Daily Faceoff after the Coyotes’ practice in Scottsdale on Saturday. “Getting traded for pretty much a used puck bag is pretty tough to swallow sometimes. Burns a fire in you a little bit to prove some people wrong.”

Gostisbehere, 29, has rediscovered his offensive dominance since first arriving in Arizona last summer. He scored 14 goals and 51 points in 82 games with the Coyotes in 2021–22 and is off to a point-per-game start through eight appearances this season.

Even at the end of his tenure in Philadelphia, Gostisbehere was flying under the radar a little bit as one of the NHL’s most efficient goal-scoring defensemen. But he’s taken that to a new level in the desert.

Shayne Gostisbehere scores his 2nd of the night off a perfect setup 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Fnl1HF4EVQ

— Bally Sports Arizona (@BALLYSPORTSAZ) October 26, 2022

“I know I’m a good player,” Gostisbehere said. “I’d say it’s down to my coaches in putting the trust in me, to put me in the situations to succeed and that trust level in the sense that, they believed in me.

“They knew I had it in me, I just had to go find it again.”

Ritchie scored just two goals as a Toronto Maple Leaf before being shipped off to Arizona in February. Since then, he’s scored 13 goals in 32 games — a 33-goal pace over a full season.

To be clear, Ritchie still has yet to score 20 goals in a season as an NHL player. It’s far from a sure thing he gets there this year. But his shooting percentage spike has coincided with a drastic shift in his deployment, including a huge uptick in average ice time both at 5-on-5 and on the power play.

Ritchie has played a similar role on a contending Boston Bruins team in the past. In Arizona, he’s showing he might be able to do it again if given another chance to ply his trade on a good team.

For now, he’s enjoying the ride.

“It’s been great out here in Arizona,” Ritchie said. “For me, personally, it’s been a chance to play and feel comfortable. We’ve got a great group here.”

Still, even in the desert, Ritchie never could’ve predicted he’d get this hot when he was first traded.

“I don’t know if I envisioned that, necessarily, but that’s the way it’s gone,” Ritchie added. “That’s the game of hockey. You get another opportunity, you get that fresh wind and start feeling better. You get confidence and stuff like that can happen.”

So fresh. So clean. 🧼 pic.twitter.com/H7i7tAfLWQ

— Arizona Coyotes (@ArizonaCoyotes) October 17, 2022

Both Ritchie and Gostisbehere praised the atmosphere at the Coyotes’ temporary home on the Arizona State University campus, although it’d be a little surprising if either player stuck around in the desert to help the team christen its permanent replacement (if it ever comes to fruition).

It’s not necessarily that Gostisbehere and Ritchie don’t like playing in Arizona. But after already receiving multiple draft selections to take on those two players last season, the Coyotes stand to potentially add even more picks by flipping them before their contracts expire.

That’s just the reality of the business. But with the Coyotes still fully committed to a rebuild, expect to see more players following in the footsteps of Gostisbehere and Ritchie in the coming seasons.

“Obviously, we’re a rebuilding team,” Gostisbehere said. “Guys come here to get a lot of opportunity. I was blessed in the sense that I was traded to this team and I got that opportunity to resurrect my career.

“Not a lot of guys get that,” Gostisbehere added. “A lot of guys are just pushed to the side and ride into the sunset. Thankfully, they trusted me.”