Drake Batherson
BY: SUFYAN JAWED
July 19th 2024
The goal of this new series is to give insight into a player on every team. The player will be randomly chosen by a panel of people close to me and this will hopefully give the general public better knowledge on a certain player in the show. Maybe you only really watch your hometown team, this will give you insight into a player that you may not have thought of in a deeper capacity.
Drake Batherson - Right Wing
Age: 26 (April 27th, 1998)
Height: 6’3 Weight: 203 Lbs
Handedness: Right
Born: Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA
National Team: Canada
Draft: Round 4, 121st overall, 2017 NHL Draft
Junior Team: Cape Breton Screaming Eagles/Blainville-Boisbriand Armada - QMJHL
NHL Year Status: Going into 7th year
Contract: 6 years x 4.95 (In year 4 of 6)
Team Role: Top 6 Forward
Career Stats
2023 - 2024 NHL Stats
Batherson has had quite the career outlook change since his draft year. He was not as hot a commodity in his draft year because he was a late bloomer with regards to his size. The summer before his draft year he grew 4 inches and entered his 2016-2017 Cape Breton QMJHL camp at 6-foot-1 and then the following year getting after he got drafted he grew taller to 6-foot-3 and has filled out his frame quite a lot more now weighing just over 200 pounds. With his late growth spurt in mind the Senators now have a player that carries an interesting skill set. Let’s look at what makes Batherson a strong offensive producer in today’s NHL.
Strengths:
Passing:
Batherson has between assisting at a strong rate the last 3 seasons, his assists per 60 minutes is 1.65 which is a more than admirable rate for a top-6 playmaker who makes just under $5M a year.
Batherson’s underrated passing ability is highlighted greatly on the power play where he often resides in the lower third of the offensive zone. He has a great knack for creating chances on the powerplay for the off-wing shot, as seen here:
Batherson has a way of drawing attention to him even when he isn’t even necessarily in a position where he’s a threat to score. Just look at this play to Thomas Chabot on the offside on the power-play, he draws attention to him and then turns his back to the flow of play, that turn creates time for Chabot to get into a scoring position and Batherson makes a beautiful new-look pass.
Batherson is no slouch off the rush either, he has the ability to keep pace with faster forwards and you can tell that he developed his hands greatly when he was less tall because he has certain quick twitch movements when it comes to passing that is tough to come by in 6-foot-3 forwards.
Wrist Shots:
Batherson has a sneaky good wrist shot but it is most effective from the slot/left circle. The majority of his other shots in all forms get saved at a pretty high rate, but as a slot finisher he is greatly effective with his wrist shots, as seen on the chart on the left. This chart shows where he scored his wrist shots from this past season, which accounted for 16 of his 28 goals. He is most effective when he gets to his positions where he knows he is effective which is wrist shots from the slot/left circle. That’s a big reason why his scoring went up this season even though he shot considerably less volume wise than he did in 2022-2023. A great example of this is shown through this goal where he waits out Kuemper and slots it top shelf.
In tight hands:
Piggy backing off of the last point, Batherson has developed a strong ability to create space for himself by deking through defenders with a decently high success rate.
Just check out this OT winner he scored, he creates deception by opening up and gets the D-man to bite on the shot then pulls it around the defender with ease as he’s going down.
But his in-tight prowess goes deeper than just deking, his awareness in-tight is unprecedented. Look at this goal where he has the presence of mind to go between-the-legs with chaos ensuing around him:
All in all Batherson is a supremely underrated commodity. The deficiencies in his game are minimal on the offensive end but that is because he has learned to play to his strengths. Especially last season where he was a more selective shooter. Not all players are effective by shooting in volume and he is one of those players, as his best shot is most effective when he’s in tight. Look for him to approach the 30 goal mark again this upcoming season but I do think that he has the potential to be a sneaky 45-50 assist man especially if the Senators power-play see’s a return to form next season.