The Beginning
When the Detroit Falcons picked Johnny Patey with the 15th overall selection in the S63 SMJHL draft, they wanted someone who could help rebuild this team from a season ago where they had only 5 total wins. Not only did they want someone who could help rebuild the back end, they also wanted someone who could help the team out on both sides of the ice where the team had a -180 goal differential. With the season almost coming to the very end with the playoffs currently in progress, Johnny's first season on a rebuilding team is going much better than expected with has given him something to look forward too.

The Good
When looking over Johnny's stats over the past season, he finished with 20 total points, tied for 12th on the team as a 3rd line rookie D-man, which is an average of 0.3 points per game which is much better than what he expected coming into the season. Even though only 3 of those points were goals in his rookie season, he currently has 2 goals in 2 games in the first round of the playoffs. Starting to put the puck in the net as a two way defenseman will be the difference of a good and a great player of the next few seasons for Johnny. The biggest stat that Johnny should be proud of is his +/- score which was only a -11. This score was tied for 7th on the team as a rookie defenseman. Johnny also helped his team go from a -180 goal differential a season ago to a -64 goal differential this season, going from 308 goals against to 245 goals against, a difference of 63 goals.


The Bad
This season has been an overall win for the Falcons but Johnny has some key areas to focus on if he wants to become a superstar. The main stat to focus on is the differential between his takeaways and giveaways by aiming to get that positive ratio between the two with still playing the same style of hockey. At the end of the regular season he finished with 42 giveaways and 28 takeaways, a -14 which could be the difference in some close games. Also when looking at game ratings, Johnny finished with an overall rating of 56 which is tied for 161st in the entire league, not where he wanted to end up considering how hard he has worked throughout the season. Finally, the worst rating that Johnny has is his shot percentage at a terrible 2.8%, like how. This stat gives him the 10th worst shot percentage in the entire league. Now you can say this means that Johnny may be getting a lot of shots but I could also say he has been taking some terrible ones when he could be making plays happen instead.

The End
Overall, Johnny Patey has had a pretty decent rookie season for the Detroit Falcons and I think they should be very happy getting him at a second round value. Johnny needs to keep growing those TPE numbers to be able to balance out his play on both ends of the ice and start making regular chances into scoring chances. With an amazing top 3 rookie picks in this draft of Seider, Steady and Patey, the defensive side of the ice should be covered for seasons to come.

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