With an NHL-playing dad, Ridly Greig’s path included hard work

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The versatility, the extensive hockey toolkit, the calmness on the ice, it all began to take shape long ago for Ridly Greig, the son of an NHLer.

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In his second NHL season, after getting a 20-game taste a year ago, the 21-year-old Greig is showing the skills he began to develop so many years ago.

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With the absence of Josh Norris (upper-body injury) in the Senators lineup, Greig has been filling in quite nicely as the centre on his team’s top line alongside Brady Tkachuk and Claude Giroux. He had two goals on Tuesday in a 7-4 loss to the Colorado Avalanche.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. As a second-year player, he’s still finding himself on the ice, figuring out how to do the things that can make him a more complete player.

His versatility is something Senators interim coach Jacques Martin appreciates.

“He’s still new to the NHL,” Martin said. “In the past, I think, mistakes our organization has made, they fall in love with young guys before they’re proven. You appreciate what (Greig is) doing, but you have to remember, this is a tough league.

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“You like his improvement, you like the direction he’s going, you like what he brings — the intensity, the coachability — when a player has that, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

“He’s a player that can move from one line to another. Maybe he’s a third-line player and he becomes a second-line player. Maybe he’s a fourth-line player and becomes a third-line player. To me, your third and fourth lines are as important as your first and second lines.

“When you look at the top teams, if they don’t get the contribution from the bottom-six forwards, there’s not many (of them) that win the (Stanley Cup).”

For Greig, it all goes back to Lethbridge, Alta., where he grew up, after living in Philadelphia for a year, then Germany for four more as the son of a hockey nomad, Mark Greig — a former first-round draft pick who spent parts of nine seasons in the NHL with Hartford, Toronto, Calgary and Philadelphia.

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It goes back to his minor hockey days when his mom, Cindy, was his first coach. While Mark, obviously, had a huge influence in the development of his son, Cindy also had a huge hand in what’s happened.

“It can fly under the radar when you have a hockey dad,” Ridly said. “(My dad) helped me a lot, but my mom helped me a lot, too. A lot of credit to her. My dad wasn’t around much when he was scouting. We’d have a practice at 6 in the morning, she’d get up and drive.

“She’s a big part of who I came. She’s unreal. She was a stay-at-home mom, a typical hockey mom. People joke that’s where I got the competitive side of my game from.”

Then there’s Mark, who bounced between the American Hockey League (606 games) and National Hockey League (125 games) from 1990-2003. He then played in a German pro hockey League from 2003-07. He later became a scout for the Philadelphia Flyers.

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“I use my dad a lot (for advice),” Greig said. “While I was growing up, he taught me a lot about the game. He’s a big role model for me, I wanted to be like him growing up. I talk to him after pretty much every game. He knows the game so well, I listen to what he has to say. People say we have a very similar style of game. I’m lucky to have the parents I have.”

Greig doesn’t remember much about his time in Germany. What he does remember about his younger days is being a big fan of Mike Richards, who played for the Philadelphia Flyers from 2005-11 before going to Los Angeles and then Washington.

His teammate now, Giroux, was another guy he admired.

“I liked (Richards’) competitiveness and the skill he had to go along with it,” Greig said. “It’s similar with (Giroux), he’s such a competitive guy, with smarts and the skill to go with it. To be able to play with G, the guy I looked up to, is pretty neat.”

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Along the way, Greig developed a work ethic that pushed him along as he developed. In his final season of junior hockey with the Brandon Wheat Kings, after being selected by the Senators in the first round (28th overall) of the 2021 NHL draft, he put up huge offensive numbers — 26 goals and 37 assists in just 39 games.

“Anything you can do to get into the NHL, you do it,” he said. “The hard work pays off. When I was 16, in junior, I wasn’t playing as much, I was trying to make a difference doing whatever I could when I was on the ice.

“You always have to be ready. I always loved being at a hockey game. I don’t know what my dad would have done if I said I wanted to quit.”

Listed as 6-foot-1, 184 lbs., Greig says he put in a lot of hard work to be ready for this season.

“The summer was huge for me,” he said. “I was pretty motivated to make the team. My confidence level coming into the year was pretty high.”

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