I gotta agree with canovin here that putting on lean muscle is a long, slow process. People who actually train hard know how hard it is to put on lean muscle mass, those who only read sports press releases have no idea. Everyone's weight varies by a few pounds per day based on things like water/carb storage, obviously RNH/his agent are going to compare his lowest daily weight to his highest daily weight, a gain of 7 pounds basically means "he was previously varying from 165-169 lbs, now he's varying from 168-172 lbs, but there was one day when we measured him at 165 lbs and one day when we measured him at a 172 lbs, so he's up 7 lbs!" This report came out just 1 month after the end of the WHL playoffs, he's probably up like 3 lbs for real (with the rest being daily weight fluctuation exaggerations based mostly on water), and most of those 3 pounds would probably be in carb and fat storage. Remember that he went from the intense physical exertion of the WHL season/playoffs to a bulking program, that means going from a state of super minimal water and carbohydrate weight to a state where you're eating like mad and doing less cardio, that's gonna mean a lot more water, carb and fat weight. Honestly I'd be surprised if he's gained much more than 1 lb of muscle.
These reports you hear from players/agents/teams are not lies, but they are very partial truths. Some fans here "player X gained 15 lbs over the summer" and think "sweet, 15 lbs of muscle," but that's not even close to being true. "15 pounds" in player/agent/team speak basically generally means something more along the lines of 5 pounds of water weight, 2 pounds of carbohydrate storage, 4 pounds of fat (from the high calorie bulking diet, that will quickly be lost as the season), and 4 pounds of lean muscle.
I really like RNH as a prospect, but regardless of how much weight RNH claims to put on over the summer, it'll probably be 5 pounds or less of lean muscle mass. For an ectomorph who will also be doing a tonne of cardio alongside all that weight training and eating, about 1-2 lbs of lean muscle per month is solid results, even if the total gains are way higher than that. I'm sure RNH will eventually put on enough muscle so that strength is not a major issue in the NHL, but it's going to take many summers, not just one. Right now his weight when playing hockey (so low fat/water/carb storage) is 165 lbs, you can probably expect him to gain about 5 lbs of lean muscle each summer, then lose a pound of lean muscle over the season (for a net gain of say, 4 lbs), so for him to get up to a more ideal mid-season/hockey playing weight of a lean 185 lbs is probably gonna take something like 5 years, assuming he stays dedicated. Hockey players are not body builders who just bulk year round and say "screw cardio, all I care about is putting on size 12 months a year," hockey players only bulk in the summers, do crazy weight-killing cardio all fall/winter/spring, and even in the summers they have to focus a lot on cardio and explosiveness as well. I'll bet an average gain of 4 pounds of lean muscle year after year for the first few seasons of any NHLers career is probably actually being pretty generous. That's not to say RNH won't be effective even in his first couple seasons at somewhat lower weights, he's very shifty and a lot of young guys do well in the NHL despite being semi-twigs, but don't expect him to put on 10 lbs of lean muscle mass per year, that doesn't really happen in the NHL, especially among ectomorphs. People like Rstar who think he should be able to "easily put on 15lbs of quality muscle before training camp" have clearly never done any sort of serious weight training.
