James Dion’s rookie season with the Great Falls Grizzlies has ended in a last place finish and went out with a whimper rather than a bang or anything close to the sort. Let’s see how his season went from a personal perspective.

From the overall perspective….. Not well. A -12 +/- and just 39 points. 12 goals which is 7th on the team and tied for 104th in the league. Yikes, so he wasn’t exactly what one would call a proficient scorer… but he never claimed to be one in hockey. How about the Assists? 27 assists which is 4th on the team and most out of all the rookies in his class (better). League wide, tied for 85th… well it’s better than the goals? I guess?

Alright how about something less completely terrible. His +/- A stat I personally love in basketball and assume it can carry somewhat the same way in hockey. Alright so lets take a look, we know it’s -12 but where does that rank in the team…. HEY HEY! Something good! Dion has the lowest +/- of any forward on GFG! That’s something promising for the future! League wide…. Tied for 160th among all players….jesus…. but that’s not important. It’s only Dion’s rookie season AND the good news is. Of the two players above Dion in +/- one of them is Pork Torkleton who is a fellow GFG rookie! So that is another positive sign for GFG!.

Now how about efficiency, sure the counting stats  aren’t great but maybe he was surprisingly efficient. Hey! 3rd best shooting percentage on the team it was…. 15%!?!?!?! My god he has a better chance of getting struck by a van than scoring a goal. It was 44th in the league for all those wondering. 

Now let’s nit pick and pray for something good. Well that didn’t take long, Dion had 37 giveaways and 40 takeaways so he was a net +3 possessions for the team. He’s also tied for 3rd in goals per 60 minutes. Now to be fair basically the entire team is and 2.6 isn’t very good but it means he is performing somewhat well compared to his team. That is an important metric, being compared to your teammates that is.

Too surmise, I’m not a hockey expert or anything but I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that Dion performed better than most of the forwards on his team (aided by being on the 3rd line but still, you can only play who is in front of you) and should be a spot of hope for the Great Falls Grizzlies going forward.


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