If all goes well for his current team, Ryan Leonard won’t be able to join his future team until the last week of the regular season – for, if Boston College goes all the way to the Frozen Four finals on April 12, he’ll have MAYBE the final two games of the regular season if he comes right away.
But any run that Leonard would get with the Caps, however far they go in the playoffs, is time GM Chris Patrick told Grant & Tobi Tuesday he thinks will be very valuable.
So, how confident would Patrick and the Caps be, if Leonard does come and play a little bit here soon, that he can be a big help in the playoff run?
“I mean, it's kind of hard to know until you see it, but just the fact that he's played on the biggest stages someone his age can, at the U20 level and winning gold medals there, and played in the World Championships against men last spring, he’s been exposed to some higher-level competition,” Patrick said. “The group we have in our room and our leadership group have done a great job of integrating guys, so I'm sure they get them in and get him feeling comfortable, and help kind of teach him along the way about the system and how we're playing. I think there’s already some texting back and forth with him and some of our leadership group about what it takes to be a Caps player and the Caps way and things like that, so, hopefully he’ll come in and have a little boost. I think some of Tom Wilson’s first games with us were in the playoffs, and you get that element of a young kid that's gonna go out there and just and just kind of give it his all and compete hard, and has some skill and some ability to disrupt and have an impact, so maybe there's something similar to that.”
Listen to Patrick’s entire visit with G&D, which also includes talk on Jakob Chychrun’s extension, above!