Rattie always had finishing touch
Winger hopes to find success playing on Oilers’ big line after slow start to career
Practically from the moment Ty Rattie picked up a hockey stick, he knew how to find the back of the net.
The Edmonton Oilers forward lit up the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League before going on to star with the Portland Winterhawks in the Western Hockey League.
Now back in a top-line role, Rattie is making the most of an opportunity to play with Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, displaying the natural finishing abilities that made him such a potent goal scorer growing up.
“I think sometimes it’s almost a muscle memory type of thing,” said Rattie, who had seven goals and 10 points in three pre-season games heading into Thursday’s contest against the Arizona Coyotes. “An old coach used to say to me to always go to your bread-and-butter shots, whether that’s low glove or high blocker. Whenever you get that chance you have to pick your spots.”
Rattie, 25, has always possessed an innate goal-scoring ability. It just hasn’t been on display throughout his professional career. The Calgary product was practically on his final chance when he was signed by the Oilers to help fill out their AHL roster in Bakersfield last season and took advantage of an opportunity with the Oilers late in the season to play beside the most gifted player in the game today, McDavid.
Rattie’s performance in the preseason has him pencilled in to start on the Oilers top line when the team opens its 40th anniversary season in Sweden against the New Jersey Devils on Oct. 6.
“It feels good to contribute, but I’ve been saying this all camp, it’s just pre-season, you can’t get too high, because I know this streak is not going to last forever,” Rattie said. “I’m not going to score like this every single game. I just try to stay even-keeled. Nobody has told me that I’m on the team 100 per cent and I can take my foot off the gas pedal. I have two more games to prove that I should be on that Europe trip and that I can be on this team for a full 82-game schedule.”
Rattie has put in a strong claim for the spot on McDavid’s right wing, and he’s fitting in well with two of the smartest hockey minds on the Oilers roster. Rattie’s ability to read off McDavid and NugentHopkins has made him successful where so many others have failed.
“When you look at those guys, you have to have a hockey IQ and I think the hockey IQ for those pure scorers allows them to set themselves up in a position to score,” said Oilers head coach Todd McLellan.
“The reads on where the play is going is a little faster than nongoal scorers and they arrive on time, they’re not too early or not too late. They also have the courage to shoot. They don’t slough off a scoring opportunity to get it to Connor or to Leon (Draisaitl) or to Nuge. They take the chance and they make good on it.”
Rattie had five goals and nine points in 14 games during his brief audition with the Oilers at the end of last season with the playoffs already out of reach.
He scored four goals in 30 games through four seasons with the St. Louis Blues before being cut loose, never really getting an opportunity to play in an offensive role.
“I’d like to think of myself as kind of a smart hockey player,” Rattie said. “I think I understand what Connor and Ryan want to do with the puck. McDavid is the best player when he has the puck on his stick. He can beat guys by himself and he has so much speed in the neutral zone, so why not give him the puck? Why not get open? Why not get to the net? Because you know that’s where it’s going.”
The knock on Rattie early in his professional career was he was a liability defensively. And when used in a checking role though the first few years in the Blues organization, that presented a problem.
Ironically, by shoring up his defensive game, Rattie has been given an offensive opportunity with the Oilers.
“He’s a star in junior, he scores, he can likely get away with a little bit of cheating there,” McLellan said. “He becomes a pro and has to enter the league as a third- or fourth-line winger and those guys, you can’t cheat. You have to do it right, you can’t cheat the team, you can’t cheat yourself.
“He goes and works on that (defensive) part and now he has an opportunity to play in an upper role and get back to that offensive finish and play with those type of guys and you hope the first four or five years taught him not to cheat and how to defend, how to play along the boards and maybe he’s a more complete player now than he was coming out of junior.”
Like someone who is down on their luck then wins the lottery, Rattie wants to cash in his ticket when the games mean something and cling to McDavid and NugentHopkins for as long as possible.
“It’s easy to play with those two. They don’t get upset when you screw up or anything like that and I’m such good friends with Nugent-Hopkins off the ice,” Rattie said. “Connor is so good on and off the ice, it’s been easy and it’s been a nice transition and it’s been working so far.”