The Boston Bruins have traded winger Danton Heinen to the Anaheim Ducks straight up for Nick Ritchie.

The Bruins get: a budding power forward. And although fantasy owners are losing patience (or have lost patience) with Ritchie taking so long to blossom, the reality is he is right on track. I spoke of this in this morning’s Ramblings. Here is the excerpt:

Ritchie joins the organization for which his brother Brett Ritchie plays.

The Ducks get: A skilled potential top-sixer who, according to our Breakout Threshold, should have begun breaking out around a month ago. But in Boston, by that point, he wasn’t getting it done and he wasn’t getting prime linemates to help it happen. But that’s no excuse for him to have a second consecutive season of declining production. Heinen had 47 points as a rookie in 2017-18 and then dipped to 34 last year. This season he is on pace for 31 – completely ridiculous for a third-year player with some upside. Not many players needed a fresh start more than this guy.

Fantasy Players Impacted: Ritchie will continue doing what he was doing. As a power forward moving steadily along the production curve the way we expected, he will continue to safely do that nestled in the comfort of a strong, deep team that will limit their expectations for him. He is the perfect third-line forward and on the third line he will continue to get better and work his way up to a scoring line in a couple of years. Ritchie will just take Heinen’s spot in the lineup, and is probably a better fit for the role.

It is Heinen who can really cash in here – but this is all up to him. He needs to take advantage. And getting a few bounces couldn’t hurt. Because Anaheim is a rebuilding team looking for answers. And March is the month where those teams give extended tryouts to their young unknowns. They want a couple of these youngsters to take off and establish himself. So the Ducks will do everything they can to help that along. How many different players have played with Ryan Getzlaf this year? Looking at his season’s linemates, it really is something to behold. Not one set of linemates has played even 9% of his even-strength shifts with him. Not even 9%! Rickard Rakell and Jakob Silfverberg have played with him 8.7% of his shifts to lead the way. Ondrej Kase, Nick Ritchie, Max Jones, Troy Terry, Max Comtois, Daniel Sprong, Adam Henrique, Sam Carrick and Devin Shore have each had a shot with Getzlaf. Do you really think Heinen isn’t going straight to that line for a shot? Of course he is – bet on it 100%. But will it work? That’s up to Danton Heinen. He will probably never again get an opportunity like the one that is ahead of him for the next month. This likely takes some of the opportunities away from Max Jones, Sam Steel and Troy Terry – but in the long run they will be just fine because the team already knows what it has with them.

Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

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