Welcome to this edition of "From The Archive". In this recurring series, we open The Hockey News' vault and display some of the top WHL-related articles from the past. Today's article comes from Volume 70, Issue 15, where Jared Clinton wrote about former Brandon Wheat Kings Star, Nolan Patrick.
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"Don't Believe (The Lack) Of Hype", Volume 70, Issue 15, May 2017
Winters in Winnipeg get cold. Not throwa- sweateron cold, either. We’re talking bone-chilling, pray-the-car-starts cold, where a temperature in the minus-teens could be considered T-shirt weather. The frigidity of the Manitoba capital has its perks, though. The city is sprinkled with hundreds of backyard rinks, enough that on the coldest nights the number of fresh sheets can outnumber the brave souls willing to battle the elements to lace up a pair of skates. One such rink was constructed by Stephen Patrick, a training ground for his son and two daughters.
Eventually, Stephen’s children graduated, losing their home-ice advantage in favor of community rink skating programs where they’d get the chance to patter around the ice with their peers. For his son, graduation came at four, but the youngster’s CanSkate coronation wasn’t met with jubilation. Rather, he did his damnedest to ensure his feet didn’t touch the ice. “He’d have all his gear on at home, we’d get there to put his skates on and walk him to the gate and he wouldn’t go on the ice,” Stephen recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. He was holding the door shut, and both arms were out so he couldn’t go on the ice. And I’m going, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening.’ ”
After talking with his son back in the car, Stephen thought the next time would be different, but the second attempt at skating lessons went much the same. So, Stephen, who spent eight seasons in the NHL before joining the family realty business back in Winnipeg, took matters into his own hands. He scooped up his son, popped open the gate, walked out onto the ice, placed the equipment-clad tot in the corner and left in a hurry, shutting the door behind him.
Thus began the hockey career of Nolan Patrick.
To listen to Patrick tell the tale of those first few strides is to hear a refrain not often uttered by someone on the verge of being selected first overall in the NHL draft. Simply put, he hated it. He hated being tossed out on the ice, and he didn’t want to skate. Stephen corroborates the story, too, recalling how Nolan was “mad as hell.” But, as one could guess, that feeling subsided, and all these years later Patrick’s game has grown to a point that his has been the name on the tip of scouts’ tongues for two seasons now.
Patrick’s draft stock spiked during his first year with the WHL’s Brandon Wheat Kings, his father’s alma mater. His eyebrow-raising 30-goal, 56-point freshman campaign at 16, capped off with rookie-of-the-year honors, solidified Patrick’s position as the best in his class. But if there’s a different feeling surrounding this draft’s presumptive No. 1 pick, it’s not without reason.
The term “generational talent” has been thrown around a lot in recent years, as the likes of Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine were made top picks. With such stars being ready-made for the NHL, the previous two draft lotteries have had that sweepstakes tag, as if Publisher’s Clearing House had been set to knock on a lucky GM’s door with the first overall pick and a franchise player. This season’s lottery, however, won by the New Jersey Devils, came and went without much hullabaloo.
Then there’s the fact that the vast majority of the hockey-watching population hasn’t yet had the chance to watch Patrick on one of the grandest stages and under the brightest lights. Although he has made his presence known with the Wheat Kings, in the Memorial Cup tournament and at the CHL’s Top Prospects Game, it’s the World Junior Championship that gets most prospect-watchers excited for the next crop of young talent, and Patrick hasn’t been able to showcase his considerable ability in the best-on-best tournament.
He could’ve had a chance in 2016, but he wasn’t invited to Canada’s camp as a 17-year-old. Then this past season, when he was set to get his shot at becoming one of the squad’s stars, Patrick was forced out of action. He had been injured late in 2015-16, playing hurt throughout the Memorial Cup with what was believed to be an abdominal injury. The truth is Patrick was playing with a sports hernia, which wasn’t properly diagnosed until he returned to Winnipeg following the season and wasn’t repaired until he went under the knife in July. That put Patrick in recovery mode for months, and he knew as soon as Team Canada’s camp was announced he wasn’t going to be healthy in time.
Mentally preparing for the possibility of missing camp helped lessen the blow, but the reality of having to skip what may have been his last opportunity to represent Canada at the WJC was tough to swallow. “The most disappointing thing for me was I did everything I could to get healed by seeing doctors and they made a mistake,” Patrick said. “That happens. It’s tough. Everyone’s going to go through injuries, but I just focused on rehab and working as hard as I could to get back in shape and get healthy. I wasn’t pouting about it all year, wasting a year of training.”
“I WAS ON YOUTUBE WATCHING CERTAIN PLAYERS I LIKED, TAKING PARTS OF THEIR GAME AND USING IT TO MY ADVANTAGE – NOLAN PATRICK”
Despite missing the tournament, Patrick remained the consensus No. 1 prospect. And to forego excitement over landing a player of his potential, be it because he didn’t show what he could do at the world juniors or because he hasn’t been painted with the same brush as McDavid and Matthews, would be wrongheaded. When talking to those around him, those who’ve watched him develop and grow as a player, you’ll hear that Patrick’s game is understated, so it’s no wonder the hype train isn’t rolling along at the same speed as it was for those highly publicized generational talents. As Wheat Kings GM Grant Armstrong tells it, Patrick is the type of player who will sneak up on the scoresheet only to end the night with a handful of points. “He’s not flashy, there’s no flash in his game, but it’s all little steps that make him have success,” Armstrong said. “A 200-foot player is exactly how I would describe him. He doesn’t give up on defense, and he certainly excels when he gets an opportunity offensively.”
And Patrick’s game isn’t devoid of game-breaking skill. Doug Sinclair, who has scouted for the WHL’s Everett Silvertips for 15 years and coached Patrick at the midget and under-16 level, describes one of his bantam goals as among the most incredible he’s ever seen. The play saw Patrick, who had been sidelined for three months due to injury, skate the whole ice, cut across the blueline and rifle a laser backhand top-shelf. “It wasn’t a fluke. He meant to do it,” Sinclair said. “Full speed down the boards looking for passing options, crosses the blueline, makes a read and then just all one motion, forehand, backhand, zip. Right over the goalie’s shoulder. He ended up scoring four goals that game. I was going, ‘This guy’s missed three months of the year?’ ”
That natural scoring ability was a fixture of Patrick’s game throughout his pre-major junior days, including a season in which he put up 33 goals and 75 points in just 19 games. His offensive consistency carried over to the WHL, as well, where he has 92 goals and 205 points in 163 games over his three seasons with the Wheat Kings. But it’s on his own time, after practices and away from the rink, that he hones the skills that have made him one of major junior’s most unstoppable offensive threats.
In place of practicing the razzledazzle that fills highlight reels, Patrick has worked steadfastly on building a skill set that is more substance than style. He plays a heady game, outthinking opponents as often as he outmaneuvers them – an attribute he displayed at an early age. “He was always a smart hockey player when he was younger, and that was just the way he was,” Stephen said. “He was a smaller kid when he was playing, and he played age advanced a couple years, but I thought at that age he wasn’t that fast so he was maybe a little sneakier with the puck to make something happen.”
Patrick’s on-ice intelligence has rarely gone unnoticed. The first time Armstrong saw Patrick, he was heading toward the WHL’s bantam draft and Armstrong was plying his trade as a scout with the Victoria Royals. Upon seeing Patrick, Armstrong was taken aback by the way the then-15-yearold thought the game and his ability to seemingly make the right decision with the puck 10 times out of 10. Armstrong dedicates his time to finding players who can think the game as well as they can play it. “Nolan was that player,” he said. “You could tell that he could do things that other players couldn’t do.”
It’s possible to chalk up Patrick’s hockey smarts to innate ability. The game runs in his family, after all, with Stephen’s pedigree as a first-round selection and Patrick’s uncle, James, a first-rounder in his own right who has gone on to a successful career as an NHL assistant coach. Yet to attribute Patrick’s off-the-charts hockey IQ solely to his bloodline wouldn’t do him justice.
Armstrong spoke of Patrick’s inquisitive nature, one that saw the teenager grill his rookie GM about the whys as much as the hows of the Wheat Kings’ systems, and Sinclair called Patrick a cerebral player. Patrick has put the time in to be that smart, two-way, mistake-free player coaches and GMs salivate over, even doing his own film study at a young age. That willingness to watch and learn from the game’s best, and even his peers, is why Patrick is often called a student of the game. “I watched more hockey than other kids,” Patrick said. “I was on YouTube watching certain players I liked, taking parts of their game and using it to my advantage. I watched Nick Backstrom, Jamie Benn and Anze Kopitar. Kopitar for his two-way game, and that’s something I pride myself on.”
Patrick’s pride in his ability at both ends of the ice isn’t unwarranted. When he came to Brandon, he said he was pushed by Kelly McCrimmon (who has since joined the Vegas Golden Knights) because the then- Wheat Kings GM could see how much he cared about becoming a complete player. Patrick’s progression toward becoming that player has continued under Armstrong, who praises his ability to be the quintessential threezone player and one the Wheat Kings quickly trusted in any situation under any amount of pressure after just one short season. Important defensivezone draw? Call on Patrick. Protecting a lead? Tap No. 19 on the shoulder. Down a goal late? Send him over the boards. And Patrick’s ability to wear so many hats and succeed in every facet of his game is the result of that academic approach he takes to improving his skills. It’s what Armstrong believes will help propel him to big-league success. “He watches (Backstrom, Benn and Kopitar), sees their strengths and makes that a part of what he’s going to work at,” Armstrong said. “Then he sees their weaknesses and tries to be better than their weaknesses.”
Patrick also possesses supreme playmaking ability, something he draws from watching Backstrom, and remarkable on-ice vision. But it’s his commitment to working on those elements of his game that sets Patrick apart from his peers and the rest of his draft class. He discovers ways to improve upon his own abilities and best those he’s up against by analyzing the intricacies of their game and his own. But that takes time, and for that reason, the relative quiet surrounding the upcoming draft could do him good. It has allowed him to avoid the noise and pressure of the assumptions that he’ll spend opening night in the NHL. That nothing is a given, though, is a mentality instilled in Patrick by his father, who said draft day will only tell Nolan “who he’s trying out for next.”
For his part, Armstrong thinks the best thing for Patrick could be a slower development track that would give him a chance to polish his already well-rounded game and allow him the time to become an impact player without hurting his confidence. The comparison Armstrong made was to Bo Horvat, the 22-year-old Canucks center who spent a year in the OHL after being drafted and then became Vancouver’s leading scorer this season. Armstrong sees no reason why Patrick can’t take a similar path. “(Nolan) wants to excel and get better every day,” Armstrong said. “Those are strong characteristics of a guy that I expect at some point in his career will have major impact on the game.”
Whether that’s next season or down the road, only time will tell. But with the way Patrick thinks the game, sees the ice and dedicates himself to becoming the type of player that does everything right, it seems only a matter of time before we look back on this lottery as one that probably should’ve had more hype. And when that day comes, some lucky team is going to be eternally grateful that Stephen Patrick literally set his son down on the path to the NHL.
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