The Ottawa Senators Great Success With Late-Bloomers
Ottawa has made an effort in drafting “late-bloomers” and they are already reaping the rewards
During a rebuild, high picks and surefire prospects are a given and the Senators have had the luxury of drafting a few blue-chip prospects in Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson but it’s usually the value drafted after the first-round is essential in creating a foundation. Pierre Dorion and his amateur scouting staff has done an exceptional job evaluating talent in the mid-rounds of the draft and has found the most success drafting the “late-bloomer”
Every player has a different development curve and not all of them align perfectly with the date of the NHL draft and the Senators have been able to find players who’ve shown extreme growth during their draft year. They’ve been able to target players (especially in the 2nd round) who have great athletic traits, translatable NHL size and skill, in favour of players who may be more of a finished product but don’t have the upside of the players the Senators selected.
Here are the players the Senators have drafted since 2017 who fit the definition of a “late-bloomer”.
Drake Batherson
4th Round (121st Overall) in 2017
Batherson may be the prime example of a “late-bloomer” as he wasn’t even playing Major Junior hockey in his draft year, instead, he was playing in the Maritime Junior “A” Hockey League with the Valley Wildcats. This league is a huge step below the QMJHL and Batherson only put up pedestrian numbers with 19 points in 28 games, while he made a brief appearance with Cape Breton of the QMJHL, he didn’t impress too much (2 assists in 10 games). Unsurprisingly Batherson was passed over in the 2016 NHL Draft but what was to follow was nothing sort of extraordinary.
In an interview with the Guardian, former NHLer and the father of Drake, Norm Batherson explained why his son was such a “late-bloomer”.
Batherson was a late bloomer, his father Norm said, but once he hit his growth spurt and was given a chance, he took off.
By the time Batherson was drafted in the 6th round of the 2015 QMJHL Draft, he was listed at just 5’8″ and just 145 pounds but fast-forward two years later and thanks to a huge growth spurt, by the time he was selected by Ottawa he was 6’2″ and nearly 190 pounds. Everyone noticed Batherson’s great talent in his early years but his size was always a barrier, now having the size advantage over other players he began to dominate.
In his draft+1 season, Batherson produced at nearly a point/game clip (58 points in 61 games) and the insane growth from his 2016 season to his 2017 season caught the eyes of the Senators staff. This was clearly not a finished product and the New Minas, Nova Scotia native would break out on the national stage the very next season.
The now 19-year-old would set the “Q” on fire during the start of the 2017-18 season as he was one of the league’s better players throughout the season finishing with 29 goals and 77 points in just 51 games. Batherson also shocked many when he made the Canadian World Junior team and had a giant impact on their gold medal victory, scoring 7 goals in 7 games. The Senators saw Batherson’s development curve and saw a great opportunity and it’s now turned into a philosophy for the amateur scouting staff and it’s paid off in more than just one instance.
Alex Formenton
2nd Round (47th Overall) in 2017
Another late-bloomer from the 2017 draft, Formenton had transferable tools at the time he was drafted and has now developed an all-around game that will carry him in the league for years. But it wasn’t like this was a simple process, just one year before the 2017 draft, the Senators speedster was producing at under a 0.5 point/game pace in junior A, finishing with 26 points in 54 games with the Aurora Tigers of the OJHL (Ontario Junior Hockey League). Formenton, like Batherson, was severely undersized heading into his OHL draft year and that’s why he fell to the 11th round:
“He was an 11th round OHL pick. It’s not that he didn’t stand out. He did. As the smallest, smart guy out there. He had speed and skill and hockey IQ, but when you aren’t much north of 5-5 and your listed weight is 120 pounds”
He had the tools but Formenton’s size severely limited him in what he could do and thanks to his growth spurt he became a regular in the London Knight’s lineup during the 2016-17 season. The King City, Ontario native was finally able to come into his own for his draft year and while his production was mediocre (34 points in 65 games) the improvement from the previous season was evident. Obviously the Senators took notice of the talented but raw forward who was now standing at 6’2″, a completely different player than the one that played with Aurora the season prior.
The Senators saw Formenton’s development curve starting to take shape and the major improvements that the 21-year-old winger has made on a year-to-year basis have been phenomenal, even making the NHL as an 18-year-old at the beginning of the 2017-18 season. While he was sent back to junior and underwent the same process the following season, the growth Formenton still shows to this day is a testament to his hard work and the Senators’ ability to ooze potential out of their prospects.
Shane Pinto
2nd Round (32nd Overall) in 2019
Pinto follows a much different path than the aforementioned Drake Batherson and Alex Formenton, as he’s always had the physical ability it was just a matter of making hockey a priority.
Appearing on the Wally and Methot show alongside teammate Jacob Bernard-Docker, Pinto never looked at hockey seriously until he was 16.
“I think when I was about 16, I kinda really got serious with hockey”
That’s crazy. Most players get drafted to junior when they’re 15 and to think Pinto didn’t even consider Hockey as his number one sport until that age is insane. The native of Franklin Square, New York was considering playing baseball full-time before he made the decision to focus on hockey. With elite talent in his arsenal and now a full commitment to hockey, Pinto started to improve by leaps and bounds. He made the move to Connecticut in the 2016-17 season in order to attend a prep school where he would hone his skills for a couple of seasons and then would make the jump to the USHL.
Pinto would score 59 points in 56 games split between the Lincoln Stars and the Tri-City Storm in his draft year, skyrocketing him into 2nd round talks in the upcoming NHL Draft, something that seemed like a far cry just two years ago.
Many pundits didn’t expect Pinto to go as high in the draft as he did but there’s no surprise that the Senators put a high priority on attaining the raw, talented forward that had so much room to grow over the next couple of years. Over the following two years, Pinto enjoyed a successful tenure at North Dakota where he’d quickly blossom into their best player and as a freshman, Pinto would score 7 points in 5 games with the Americans at the 2020 World Juniors.
The Senators and their ability to target late-blossoming players with tons of talent has been a strength of the team and is one of the reasons why the future in Ottawa looks so bright.
The Senators haven’t turned away from their draft philosophy either as they selected a player in last year’s draft that has a similar development curve to that of Batherson and Formenton.
This player being Philippe Daoust who was a 6th-round pick (158th Overall) in the 2021 draft and has already started to show tremendous improvement. Daoust, a native of Barrie, Ontario was never drafted into the OHL and spent the 2018-19 season with the French River Rapids of the NOJHL (Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League), one of the smaller junior “A” leagues in Canada. Following the season Daoust opted to try his luck with the QMJHL where he walked on with the Moncton Wildcats and ended up making the roster. Following a full season in the league where the talented forward scored 29 points in 58 games and as an older player (November birthday) the Senators still took a swing at Daoust.
Now look at the growth so far this season for Daoust:
🔥Philippe Daoust had a 5-point night (1G, 4A) in a 6-5 OT loss on Wednesday
— Sens Prospects (@SensProspects) March 25, 2021
Daoust, Ottawa's first 6th round pick in the 2020 Draft, has been on fire with points in 7 straight, including four consecutive multi-point games. He’s got 27 points (6G, 21A) in 19GP#GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/MweItdfYoK
On the season Daoust has 28 points in 21 games, which’s 1 point less than he had the season prior in 38 fewer games, truly exceptional year-to-year progression and something this Senators staff has become elite at facilitating.