A Look At Mike Ridley: Part One

Winnipeg's Mike Ridley was a star forward with the Washington Capitals that is still one of the highest-scoring Manitoba-born NHLers of all time.

Mike Ridley was a crafty and productive scorer in the National Hockey League for most of his career. He's a player who made the most of the skill and talent he had, and persevered through very long odds to become one of the premier scoring centerman's in Washington Capitals history.

He's also a prime example of how scouts can sometimes be very wrong about a player. Despite being passed over at several NHL Entry Drafts, Ridley walked into an NHL training camp on an invitation, promptly won a spot on the team, and went on to have quite the successful National Hockey League career. Today he ranks fifth all-time in NHL points for a Manitoban.

Mike Ridley was born in Winnipeg on July 8^th, 1963. He grew up in the Windsor Park neighborhood of St. Boniface and spent countless hours on the outdoor rinks at Winakwa Community Club during the cold winter months that Winnipeg possessed. He played his minor hockey for various Winakwa teams at nearby Maginot Arena.

“What else are you going to do in the winter?” Ridley said with a smile. “I played lots of different sports growing up and hockey was kind of that number one sport we all played in the winter. I don't remember any big decision to get into hockey, it just happened. My dad coached a little bit early on when I played here and there, but that was it.”

Growing up in Windsor Park, the NHL seemed very far away from Ridley. “There was never any thought that I could play in the NHL one day. My friends, street neighbours and people from school would all play around on the ice all the time, but there was a zero percent chance we thought that one day one of us could play in the NHL for a living.”