St. Louis Blues Recall Ty Rattie from AHL Chicago Wolves
The St. Louis Blues suffered two big losses in Thursday night’s overtime win over the Nashville Predators, as forwards Patrik Berglund and Jori Lehtera each sustained injuries that will keep them out at least for Friday night’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes. The Blues had just one extra forward on the roster to replace the two injured ones, so they filled the vacancy on Friday morning by recalling Ty Rattie from the Chicago Wolves of the AHL.
The 21-year-old Rattie, a second-rounder in 2011, led the Wolves with 17 goals in 43 games this season, and he had also notched 11 assists. He recently had the honor of appearing in the AHL’s All-Star Game. With Dmitrij Jaskin having graduated to the NHL, Rattie was considered the best prospect on the Wolves’ roster.
Rattie made his NHL debut on April 11, 2014, joining the Blues at the end of the season after the team suffered an incredibly unfortunate wave of injuries. He played in the final two games of the regular season and was held pointless while registering a plus-minus rating of minus-2.
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It’s generally been thought during the 2014-15 campaign that despite Rattie’s progress in the AHL, he would still be rather far down the list for a call up to the NHL club due to the fact that the Blues could easily just plug in a grinder type (i.e. Chris Porter, Colin Fraser, etc.) on the fourth line and move Steve Ott or Ryan Reaves up to fill a vacancy on one of the top three lines in the event of injury.
However, with the Blues having struggled during the latter part of December while employing this tactic in the absence of Jaden Schwartz, they’ve obviously changed course and are now more comfortable plugging in Rattie, a more natural top-nine player. While there’s some continued risk in having him on the defensive end of the ice, he’s shown enough in the AHL to at least deserve a chance to prove that he’s a better scoring option than Ott or Reaves.
If Berglund or Lehtera comes back quickly, Rattie’s stay with the Blues may be short-lived, although they don’t actually have to make a roster move until Porter returns from his ankle injury in a few weeks, as a roster spot was opened up by the retirement of Martin Brodeur earlier this week.