Everything a coach could ask for
As far as timing goes, it was a nightmare, the kind of why-me scenario that makes people curse the hockey gods and wonder what they possibly could have done to deserve it.
In the most important year of his hockey career, Nolan Patrick was out of the lineup for three months.
Due partly to injury and partly to a growth spurt — “the bones didn’t catch up to me as fast as I’d like them to,” he said — the Winnipeg native had to have shoulder surgery in the summer, forcing him to miss about half of his draft year. At the time, Patrick thought it was the end of his season. You could forgive him for thinking his career was in jeopardy before it even began.
Of course, it was neither of those things. Patrick returned to the ice in December and finished the season with 75 points in 19 games.
“I t hink t hat kind of helped me to go through that at a young age,” Patrick said. “At the time, everyone thinks the bantam draft is the most important thing, so it was kind of good to kind of mature and go through an injury at a time when I thought it was really important.”
That was four years ago, before he was drafted fourth overall by t he Brandon Wheat Kings in the Western Hockey League, and long before his latest why- me scenario.
This time, it was a lower abdomen injury that forced Patrick to miss the first three months of the season. But after scoring four points in his return to the lineup last week, the 18- year- old once again has good reason to believe he’ll end up in a good spot.
There are signs of that already. Despite missing the World Junior Championship and appearing in only eight games this year — six before his injury and two after it — NHL Central Scouting named Patrick the No. 1 North American skater in its latest rankings Wednesday.
“The good part for scouts is that Nolan Patrick is well known,” NHL Central Scouting’s Dan Marr told Postmedia last month. “We’ve got two years of watching him and the good thing with him is there are no surprises. He gives you the same game, the same performance, every time you see him.”
Still, the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is shrinking, especially after Nico Hischier impressed scouts with four goals and seven points in five games for Switzerland at the world juniors. The two top-ranked players will meet later this month at the CHL/ NHL Top Prospects Game in Quebec City, with Patrick and Hischier as the respective captains.
“I don’t know too much about him,” Patrick said of Hischier, who before Thursday’s game had 63 points in 37 games for the Halifax Mooseheads in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. “I just saw him play at the world juniors and ob- viously he’s a very talented player and he’s ranked where he is for a reason, so I’m excited for that Prospects Game. It should be fun to compete against him and all the top players there.”
Scouts have been underselling this year’s NHL entry draft, mostly because there is not a player like Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews at the top. There probably isn’t a Jack Eichel or Patrik Laine, either, but that’s not really saying much. Players like that do not come around very often.
And t here’s a l ot to l i ke about t he 6- f oot- 3, 200- pound Patrick, who North American Central Scouting’s Mark Seidel said, “is a guy that all 30 coaches would love to have, because he’s big, he’s smart and he has all the parts that you want.”
“The player pool is what it is. There will be some great players here,” said Vegas Golden Knights assistant GM Kelly McCrimmon, who drafted Patrick when he was GM of the Wheat Kings. “With respect to Nolan Patrick, if he was drafted last year, I think he would be held in similar regard to the top players.”
As a 16- year- old, Patrick was named rookie of the year after scoring 30 goals — only two others achieved that feat — and last year finished fifth in league scoring with 41 goals and 102 points. But it’s not the offensive output that makes the centre so enticing.
Some have called him the second coming of Anze Kopitar, because he has off-the-charts hockey IQ and already plays a mature, two- way game. With a dad ( Steve) and an uncle ( James) who both played in the NHL, Patrick understands the subtleties of the game. When he was 16, the Wheat Kings matched him up against Leon Draisaitl, who was two years older and already drafted, in the WHL championship final.
“We could only do that because he had great hockey sense,” McCrimmon said.
Neil Chow, Patrick’s minor- hockey coach f or two years, remembers the time he asked the centre to play defence in a WHL draft showcase tournament because he was short on bodies.
“He didn’ t complain,” Chow said. “He played defence for us the whole tournament and didn’t get the points t hat he probably would have. He understood how to play the team game.
“I had heard some people say, ‘ Aw, he’s not that good.’ I was like, ‘ You have no clue.’”
We don’t know exactly what to expect of Patrick because we haven’t seen much of him this season. That’s what makes his second half so important. While no one is expecting him to score four points a game like he did in bantam, he will have to make up for lost time.
“There’s a lot of hockey to be played still,” Patrick said. “I really don’t think ( about the draft) too much. I just try to play as good as I can every night and help my team win and hopefully people appreciate that and appreciate what I have to offer. I’m not thinking I have to prove myself. I just try to put as much ( as possible) on the table every night.”