OSHAWA, Ont. — Calum Ritchie leaves no stone unturned.

Not at Limitless Training Systems, the Oakville, Ont., gym where he trains under his strength coach, Paul Ferri. Not on the ice with his Oshawa Generals or his offseason skills and shooting coach Josh Wrobel. Not even in his diet with his nutritionist, Dr. Callum Cowan, the team naturopathic doctor for the Arizona Coyotes and London Knights.

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That’s how Ritchie has always been, and the more you get to know him and how he got here — to being the 17-year-old alternate captain of those Generals and a potential top-10 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft — the more you realize that his prospects have as much to do with his attitude and curiosity as they do with his genetics or his skill.

The first time Generals general manager Roger Hunt saw Ritchie play was in Vaughan, Ont., in one of the small number of showcases that took place during the pandemic in order to get the 15-year-old prospects eligible for the 2021 OHL Priority Selection in front of teams.

Until then, watching Ritchie and the rest of his draft class had been “a real kind of underground thing” where players were distributing links to their tape to clubs, or booking ice time whenever restrictions allowed (sometimes only to cancel them when restrictions came back into place).

The summer before his OHL draft year, Ritchie didn’t get on the ice at all beyond a few sessions on shooter pads. Once the winter came, he did all of his skating on the local outdoor rink, practicing his shot and dusting off his gear.

But late in what should have been his U16 season, when he and his Oakville Rangers should have been playing for their league title and maybe even the year-end OHL Cup after that, restrictions eased enough for him and his teammates to practice with each other and eventually participate in those much-needed showcases.

Though his EliteProspects page lists zero games played in 2020-21, he guesses that he played in about 15 by year’s end, with scouts even coming by practices to get extra looks.

Because of that, first impressions mattered.

And Hunt knew almost right away. At that rink in Vaughan, it didn’t take him long before he, his head scout Dan Curry, and his director of hockey operations Mike Kelley all turned to each other and said the same thing: “He could have played in our league last year.”

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He had everything they were looking for: size, talent, shot, fast motor skills in his hands, smarts, competitiveness.

When they sent the video on to the team’s president and owner, Rocco Tullio, he quickly identified the same things.

“The three things that matter to me as a hockey player is how talented you are, how you process the game, and how you compete,” Tullio said. “All of those things should mean a lot of success for him if he can stay healthy.”

From that point on, Ritchie became No. 1 on the Generals’ list and they hoped that he’d be there when they were up with the No. 2 pick.

Because of the pandemic, they also couldn’t interview or dig in on as many players as they usually would. So they had to be right about the few that they did. After doing their due diligence on the draft’s other top prospects, settling high on defencemen Cameron Allen and Tristan Bertucci, and forwards like Colby Barlow and Ritchie, they kept coming back to the latter.

It became about more than the hockey player they’d seen only a little of on the ice, too.

“Cal was a great interview over Zoom, and we got to see glimpses of the personality and how mature he was, and that was it,” Hunt said. “Because it’s not easy to get a mature 16-year-old and when you were talking to him you felt like you were talking to another adult. Combine that with incredible talent and high IQ hockey skills, and you’ve got to think you’re in pretty good shape for having a pretty good player.”

When the Sudbury Wolves drafted American forward Quentin Musty with the first pick, Hunt, Tullio and their staff didn’t think twice.

Ferri has been training Ritchie for so long that when he’s asked to remember just how long, he has to go back two gyms to 2013, when an eight-year-old Calum would have followed his big brother Ethan into a workout almost a decade ago.

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At the time, they were both “scrawny little guys.” Now, they’ve both “turned into absolute animals.”

Ethan, now a 20-year-old defenceman with the Sarnia Sting who was recently invited to the Sabres’ rookie camp, never stopped leading the way and has become “out of control strong” in the gym.

Calum has always wanted to do everything Ethan could. Last summer, that included him asking to be moved up into Ethan’s older group in the gym with top prospects like Shane Wright and Luke Evangelista. Typically, Ferri wouldn’t move someone as young as Calum up that quickly. But Calum’s not any other kid.

“He’s in the same category as Shane (Wright). He’s a different breed of human and a different breed of athlete,” Ferri said.

Knowing Calum would soak it in and play catchup, Ferri caved.

“He’s a student. He just wants to ask a ton of questions, almost to the point where it’s annoying,” Ferri said. “With a lot of hockey players I find that we put the programs on the screen and we run them through it and they just do the work because we say to do it. Cal is always asking the purpose behind stuff, which is super cool. And he holds the people around him accountable. If someone’s messing around or not pulling their weight, he’s usually the first to jump on it, which for a young kid is not usually something that you see.”

In time, that attitude pushed Calum to a big summer, adding 10 pounds of muscle to bring his frame (which also grew an inch) to 6-foot-2 and 187 pounds.

“At first I think he was a little hesitant because it’s not like being on the ice. When you’re on the ice, you’re sort of shielded behind your visor. In the gym, you’re face-to-face with people. But he carries himself well and he’s mature beyond his years so he’s able to adapt to the scenario that he’s in,” Ferri said. “To even be able to have the confidence to ask (to be moved up) would put most people in a scary situation whereas for him he just soaked it all in and asked all the guys questions, and he was talking with Shane about world juniors and the Hockey Canada stuff that his brother never experienced. And he found his footing in that group, plus he’s an exceptional player which is why I allowed him to make that jump. And that sort of took him to the next level. He doesn’t have quite as much muscle mass as Ethan but he’s still three years behind, which is crazy.”

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Calum became so all-in with Ferri’s program that where there were some players who needed to be told to ramp up, he actually needed to be told to slow down.

“He just needs to understand his body a little bit better and get that sometimes less is more in terms of the volume of training and skating. Him and Ethan are on the ice every day, sometimes twice a day. They want to get better so bad that sometimes they’re tired,” Ferri said. “That kid does everything he needs to do. Those two kids like, man, they just don’t stop.”

A year before Hunt first saw Ritchie play in that rink in Vaughan, Ritchie began skating with Wrobel, who was already by then working with top NHL prospects like Brandt Clarke, Jack Quinn, Wright and Evangelista, the latter two of whom Ritchie already trained with under Ferri.

It was towards the end of Ritchie’s time in Bantam hockey, which is actually a little younger than Wrobel likes to start working with clients because at that age “the top players are the top players with good habits or bad habits.”

But after starting to get to know Ritchie (Calum actually began working with Wrobel before Ethan, so they hadn’t been introduced prior) and his game, he couldn’t believe that he was a 2005.

Off the ice, when his mom, Shannon, or dad, Pat (a VP at Suncor, an energy company), couldn’t pick him up from their sessions and Wrobel would have to drive him home (Wrobel is also from Oakville), he knew right away that Ritchie was “mature beyond his years” from their car conversation.

“When you talk to him, he just processes everything you’re saying, whether it’s hockey or not. You can tell he’s a real thinker,” Wrobel said. “And I think part of it is because he’s always following his brother around. He goes to the gym with his brother, he skates with his brother, through the pandemic they worked out every day in the basement, his brother is an absolute animal in the gym, it’s street hockey battles every day, and you kind of look at him as the same age as Ethan.”

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On the ice, when he began skating the then 15-year-old with his higher-end OHL guys, they all said what Hunt and his staff had: “He probably could have played in the OHL at 15 and been an impact player.”

When Wrobel began watching Ritchie’s games with his Oakville Rangers, Ritchie would also just “do whatever he wanted” and “dance through everybody.”

Wrobel felt that the way he was scoring all of his highlight-reel goals wasn’t going to work at the next level though (he was also on a “Super Team” in an OMHA loop that Wrobel believed didn’t properly challenge him). But getting him to recognize that wasn’t the challenge Wrobel thought it might be.

“With some of these young players who are studs they don’t really want to hear it because they don’t really understand ‘Well, what do you mean this isn’t going to work?’ He saw what I was trying to get him to do and showing him clips of older guys in OHL clips and NHL clips, he just became obsessed with that. Like I would see him put it into games right away. It was one of the fastest transitions of translatable stuff into games of someone that I’ve worked with,” Wrobel said.

“We would be working on stuff that he didn’t necessarily need in his toolbox at that age because he would have gotten away with doing things his own way. And then he was doing stuff that guys weren’t even ready to read off of. He was on a level of IQ that guys just weren’t there. It was ‘Hey, I want you trying to get into this spot, or work on this technique, and I want you practicing that whether you could have scored the other way or not.’”

Once he did make the jump to the OHL, his willingness to alter his habits paid off. In his rookie season, Ritchie became the OHL’s second-most productive under-17 player, posting 45 points in 65 games (fourth on the Generals in scoring), and another seven points in six playoff games (tied for the team lead) to earn a spot on the league’s First All-Rookie Team.

“Because he got shorted his minor midget year, there was a couple of kids in that year that really struggled because they had the mindset of ‘I was a really good player in Bantam.’ And he did not skip a beat,” Wrobel said.

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Wrobel attributes that success to the time and approach Ritchie took in his development before he attributes it to his talent.

“You can’t keep him off the ice. Like he wants to be on the ice every day. There would be days where I wouldn’t have a spot to schedule him in for a skate and he would just ask if he could come and use the other end and mess around and work on stuff. And you don’t say no to him,” Wrobel said, laughing. “So it was ‘OK, come out but I don’t want you going hard because it should be a rest day, so come out, stickhandle a little bit and shoot some pucks.’ But he just wants to be at the rink.”

On an off day between games, Ritchie is back at the billet house he shares with Generals captain Lleyton Moore. They’ve just returned from a bit of an activation, a light skate, and lunch with some of the guys. Now the group is settling in to rent the night’s slate of pay-per-view UFC fights.

When the voice on the other end of the phone relays some of what Hunt, Ferri, Tullio and Wrobel have said about him — and asks where the curiosity, dedication, and love for the sport come from, specifically — he points first to all the people who’ve made him who he is.

His passion for hockey, he says, comes from his dad, who played AAA hockey and Canadian university hockey at Wilfrid Laurier University. When he wasn’t at the rink growing up, he and his dad were out in the driveway practicing.

He was never one of those kids who cried when his parents first put him in skates. He loved it right from three years old. He wasn’t one of the many AAA hockey players of nowadays who never never actually took much interest in watching the sport, either. Ritchie knew every team and watched every game he was allowed to, memorizing stats and spitting them out on a whim, and following the Leafs and the Penguins like a religion (today, he calls himself only a Leafs fan, but he loved Sidney Crosby growing up).

He credits Ethan for making him better in all aspects of his life. Ethan has always been “way stronger (and) faster” and Calum has always tried to both catch up in the gym and on the ice and pattern his day-to-day habits after his big brother’s.

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He credits Ferri for sending him and Ethan equipment during that pandemic so that they could work out in their basement together. He insists because of that gear, he was able to put on 30 pounds during quarantine — and that the lost pandemic season actually really helped him with his development rather than hurt it.

It’s clear in the excitement with which he talks about his work with Wrobel that Wrobel wasn’t kidding when he called Ritchie a thinker. He’ll tell you about how despite the fact that he’s so much bigger and stronger now than he was when he first began working with Wrobel in Bantam, Wrobel transitioned him from the 75 flex stick he used in minor hockey to a 70 flex shaft. He’ll tell you about the changes Wrobel helped him make to the curve he uses and even the length of his stick. He’ll tell you Wrobel has also taught him how to pull pucks into his feet in a variety of ways, or even pick up rimmed pucks off the boards differently. He’ll tell you about how they’re constantly reviewing tape.

On the ice, they’ve worked on “taking a bit off of” his shot because Wrobel found he was trying to shoot it too hard instead of placing it in the net (where to shoot on goalies in certain situations is a big part of Wrobel’s teachings) or getting it off quickly. Wrobel has also helped him think about spacing and timing in new ways in order to get him into areas where he’s likely to be open in games.

“All of those little details and fine tuning have helped my game and helped get me to where I am today,” Ritchie said. “(Wrobel) changed the way I shoot. I had a decent shot but after working with him I think I can say I have a really good shot now. And the way I shot before, it’s not even close to the way I shoot the puck now.”

Yet when those around him are asked for the role they played in his development, they scoff.

It was Ritchie who asked Ferri to be moved up a group in the gym.

It’s Ritchie who pesters Wrobel for ice time when he’s not in the schedule. It’s Ritchie who goes home from an on-ice shooting session to shoot more pucks in his driveway until his childhood garage is “just mangled” with “boarded up windows” and “holes that you could see through.”

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It was Ritchie whose first impression on new Generals head coach Derak Laxdal (a coach for nine seasons with the Stars organization before this year) made him his alternate captain at 17.

It was Ritchie who left that Zoom call first impression on Hunt, not anyone else.

“You’re either a leader or you’re not. Sometimes you lead by your ability, sometimes you lead by your work ethic, and I think with him he combines those things. He’s not a rah-rah guy but he gets respect from people so that when he does say something, A. He means it or B. He’s right,” Hunt said.

When Tullio recently fielded calls from Stars head coach Pete DeBoer or NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr, it was Ritchie the kid that he wanted to tell him about as much as Ritchie the player.

He’s a quiet kid but he’s focussed, he does all the right things, he’s mature beyond his years, and he’s a good, good kid. He doesn’t give us any problems, he understands the importance of making decisions off the ice, all of it. He has been really good,” Tullio said. “He’s an interesting kid and he’s got the whole package.”

It was Ritchie who, after returning from leading the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in scoring with 10 points in five games to lead Canada to a gold medal this summer, told Hunt that he “got a few bounces.”

“I was like ‘Look, I could have those same few bounces, or somebody else could, and they wouldn’t score. You find out ways to make this puck cross that line and you’ve got an incredible gift to be able to do it.’ The scoring, like it is for most elite players when they’re young, is the easy part. He’s got an ability to score. He’s elusive. Now he’s getting the full 200-foot game. I’m telling you right now, whoever gets him in the NHL is going to be really happy with their draft. It’s an exciting product on the ice,” Hunt said.

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It’s Ritchie who, after hearing about the practices used by Mark Scheifele and Nathan MacKinnon in their nutrition on a podcast, got his blood tested to see which foods react in certain ways with his body. It’s Ritchie who, after getting those results back, cut gluten, dairy, and rice products out of his diet, first altogether and now never three days before a game while he tries to slowly reintroduce them.

“I think that (the dietary changes) has really helped me over the last little bit here. Nutrition is extremely important. Any advantage that I can get, I try to take,” Ritchie said.

And when you put all of those things about Ritchie together, Wrobel says there’s nothing to poke holes in.

“You have a 6-foot-2 centre who plays all four corners, has the dynamic flashy skill but a high level of hockey IQ too where he doesn’t force plays. And the scary thing to me is that this kid’s going to fill out. To see the frame and to know that his brother is built, and to know that Cal is going to fill out, that is a scary player,” Wrobel said. “And I really don’t think he has even shown yet what he’s capable of.”

(Top photo: Brandon Taylor / OHL Images)

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