MUSKEGON – Muskegon hockey fans are quickly learning Ty Henricks’ real last name.

It’s not Hendricks, as originally reported by this website, and apparently by many others over the years.

“Everywhere I go!” Henricks said, when asked how many times his name has been misspelled with a D in the middle. “They always get it right eventually. They see it on the back of my jersey.”

Fans have also been seeing his name in the stats quite a bit, because Henricks has been generating his share of offense since he came to Muskegon in a trade about two weeks ago.

The 6-foot-5, 200-pounder already has two goals and three assists in just four games with the Jacks, and his best production is yet to come.

His first goal came in his very first game with the Jacks, a 5-4 win over Youngstown on Feb. 3, and he said he was thrilled to get that one out of the way and show everyone what he could do.

The tally came when he grabbed a long rebound after a blocked shot and fired a high blast from the right circle that just caught the top part of the Youngstown net.

“It definitely felt like a monkey off my back,” Henricks, a native of Mission Viejo, Calif., said about that first goal.

His latest goal came last Friday on the road in a 7-3 Lumberjacks victory over Madison.

It was his first game playing on a newly-created forward line with two other young teammates with a ton of offensive talent – Sacha Boisvert and Matvei Gridin.

The impressive new line produced five goals in that game – including three from Boisvert – and Henricks had two assists to go with his goal.

“I think it’s great,” Henricks said about his new linemates. “We have chemistry and we can score goals. We are built to play with each other.

“We all know we can score, we all go and get the puck and make sure we look to pass to each other. We know one of us will eventually score.”

Henricks is the one living hockey player the Lumberjacks received when they traded veterans Jake Richard, Owen Mehlenbacher and Tyler Dunbar to three different teams a few weeks ago.

The trades were obviously geared toward the future, and the Jacks received numerous USHL draft picks that will come in handy down the road.

But they made sure they got Henricks out of the deal, because they knew about him and loved his skillset and potential.

That potential has been obvious to everyone since he piled up an amazing 68 goals and 55 assists in 60 games last season while playing for the Anaheim Junior Ducks 16-Under squad.

“I had really good chemistry with my friend who was on my line,” Henricks said about his insane production last season. “We would find each other back and forth and one of us would always score.”

He joined the USHL’s Fargo Force this season and had six goals and three assists in 28 games. He was not getting a lot of playing time in Fargo because the Force is loaded down with veteran players and currently leads the USHL’s Western Conference.

While he yearned to play more, Henricks was still pretty shocked to learn that he was traded only midway through his very first season of Tier 1 junior hockey.

“My coach asked me to come into his office after practice,” Henricks said. “I thought we were just going to go over some video clips, but he told me we were going into the general manager’s office, and that’s when they told me. I was shocked at first. It kind of caught me off guard, but after giving it some thought I decided it was the best thing for me and my development.”

Henricks instantly got a lot more ice time with the Jacks, a much younger team that is focused on building for next season and beyond.

“I love it,” Henricks said about having a bigger role with Muskegon. “I get to play more and score more goals. Fargo is a really good team, but I wasn’t playing as much as I wanted to play, probably only about 2-3 minutes per period.”

The other good thing about the trade was the geography. Henricks is committed to play college hockey at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, so the move to Muskegon puts him much closer to his future hockey home and the coaches that run the WMU program.

“It was great luck,” Henricks said about ending up in Muskegon, rather than some other USHL city. “This is a great place.”

Lumberjacks coach Parker Burgess said Henricks has been everything that he expected and credited the Jacks’ front office for identifying him as a high-quality trade target.

“Ty has come in and provided a spark for us,” the coach said. “He’s getting more ice time and responsibility than he had with his previous team, and he’s made an immediate impact, for sure. The offensive talent, the skills, the compete, it’s all there, and we’ve been impressed.

“There’s a reason we wanted him. He’s obviously going to be a big part of the team this year down the stretch, and again next season.”