Derek Plante, a Blackhawks development coach, agrees that the way Barratt thinks the game sets him apart.
"He's a little bit of a different type player," Plante said. "He doesn't necessarily fit into the normal, super-fast, super-strong box. His biggest asset is his hockey sense. He's not super fleet of foot. I think he skates fine, but when you go to a game you're not going to notice his skating. Then at the end of the night he's got a point or two and he just does it by subtly making a lot of plays."
A native of Bristol, Pennsylvania, Barratt played for Team Comcast U-16s before spending two seasons with the USA Hockey National Team Development Program.
"We'd seen him earlier and he'd always been that really high-emotion, high-compete player who does some great vision things on the ice," Gadowsky said. "Quite honestly we were hoping that's what he'd be able to achieve at this level. But I'm not even sure we could imagine him pulling off the things we've seen him pull off the last three years in terms of his skill and vision with the puck and, quite honestly, even just his competitiveness and knack to succeed."
