These days, Drake Batherson is starring in Lépine Apartments television commercials and seemingly on a different podcast every week.
Still, the 27-year-old admits he’s still a bit more comfortable on the ice instead of on camera, like he demonstrated once again on Thursday night in Anaheim.
With under two minutes to play in the third, Batherson tipped a Jake Sanderson point shot past Petr Mrázek, which served as the deciding goal in the Sens’ 3-2 win over the Ducks.
With the late goal — his second game-winner of the year — Batherson is playing at a point-per-game pace well into the second month of the season, with 19 points in 17 games.
In typical Batherson fashion, he downplayed his own role in the goal.
“We were just kind of throwing pucks on net there two or three times in a row, just lucky enough to get a stick on it, and found its way in,” he said.
Batherson, who was not even 5-foot-5 when he was passed over in the QMJHL draft in 2014, has now grown to 6-foot-3. That size allowed the winger to break into the NHL at just 20 years old despite being drafted in the fourth round only two years prior.
The silver lining to Batherson’s late growth meant that growing up, he had to always be the most skilled on the ice to stick around.
Now, while also being much more physically imposing (he’s playing this year at around 210 pounds), Batherson’s skill still stands out in a league where it is tough to do so on a nightly basis.
“Yeah, I’ve always seemed to think that I had that quiet confidence,” Batherson told Sens360. “I was always a smaller guy growing up, and it wasn’t a cocky confidence, but I always knew I had the skill and stuff.”
Having a former professional hockey player as a father — Norm Batherson raised Drake and his sister Mae (who plays for the Minnesota Frost) in Germany while he completed his own pro career — undoubtedly influenced his development and belief that he could become a pro one day.
Norm enjoyed a similar growth spurt as a teen, a fact that he says was overlooked by scouts when Batherson was growing up in Nova Scotia, where the family moved back to after the elder Batherson’s playing days were over.
“No one really did their homework on Drake as far as that one,” Norm told then-Sportsnet.ca reporter Daniel Nugent-Bowman in 2017. “It was kinda frustrating for me as a hockey guy. Him growing up in a hockey family, you’d think people would know that.”
Batherson even considered aiming for a career on the golf course rather than on the ice around that time, but his love for hockey kept him focused on the NHL.
“The biggest thing for me is probably my passion for the game,” said Batherson.
“I love hockey, if I wasn’t playing professionally, I’d be a huge fan and playing in every men’s league possible. I just love the environment of being around the rink with your best friends every day and having the passion to get better and try to win.”
Batherson’s self-confidence was eventually rewarded, as he broke through in his age-18 QMJHL season and was drafted by the Senators in the fourth round of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft.
After finishing his junior career with Cape Breton and later Blainville-Boisbriand after being drafted, Batherson didn’t even last a full season with Belleville in the AHL before being called up to the NHL, though his 62 points with the B-Sens that year did set a franchise rookie record.
Batherson recently hit the 400-game mark, becoming the 12th-fastest player from his draft class to do so. The right-winger also sits in the top ten on the points leaderboard from that class, breaking up a slew of first rounders.
