Ryker Lee is one of the most talented players on this team, his puck skills are great, he is supremely agile and shifty making defenders miss one after another, and he offers both goalscoring and playmaking abilities that can punish the opposition. Lee is almost always the smallest player on the ice, but he works very hard and has learned to deal with the pressure of larger players bearing down on him and his low center of gravity allows him to compete with these larger opponents. In addition to his shiftiness, Lee is speedy and can quickly get into a dangerous scoring area to get open for a shooting opportunity. Whenever he has the puck you get the sense that something is going to happen and there is this real dynamism to his game.

MidWest Prime vs. Windy City Storm
I think for the first time in a number of games, we got to see the effective game style of Ryker Lee truly come out. He was gathering pucks along the boards in the neutral zone and feeding his C with speed, drawing pressure and dishing to maintain possession, and reading circumstances well on when to push further into the play and when to circle back to maintain possession. His one-timer goal from Malcolm Spence speaks to Ryker’s ability to sneak into softer areas and finish off plays with his spatial reads rather than brute force. He’s such a smart player and he brings every ounce of talent he’s got to that 5’2 frame.

Lee is as offensively gifted and dynamic a player as there is in the 2006 class. He is ridiculously skilled with the only thing holding him back being size, which is not necessarily a bad thing. While most of those around him have hit puberty it doesn’t like he has as he is often the shortest, skinniest kid on the ice. But he will eventually hit it and catch up and when he does… lookout. Lee is super shifty, has crazy hands, and a great motor. He is also a phenomenal playmaker and thinks the game better than almost anyone else in this age group.

Ryker looked great in this contest, he was flying around the ice drifting in and out of pockets of space looking for the puck and constantly threatening whenever he had it on his stick. He capitalized on Zellers’ steal and one on one with the goalie he beat him with a wrist shot from in tight, and he was credited with a secondary assist on powerplay goal off a faceoff so he was influential in this one. He attacked with speed all throughout this keeping the opposition on the back foot and allowing him the time and space he was looking for. He was physically up to the task as well and battled well and was able to earn his space out on the ice.

He didn’t have a great set of games but Lee did have his moments where he looked like the dynamic playmaker that we know him to be. He was able to find his teammates with some pinpoint passes and his skating gave him opportunities to create chances in the offensive end. He did get some decent shots off but at the same time found himself just throwing the puck towards the net from near the blue line. He was decisive on the puck and demanded the puck whenever he was open as he was constantly looking to generate offense.