Alex Johnston Rookie Experience

[Alex 3,244]

 

When Johnston was drafted to the Calgary Wranglers 8^th overall during the season 78 VHL draft he knew it would be a long road to find success, and that he would need to spend another season in the VHLM first. During Johnston’s final season in the VHLM he scored on an impressive pace picking up 59 goals and 118 points in 72 games. In his own words this performance put his expectations way to high for his first VHL season, as he would go on the longest scoreless streak of his young career as he would not score in his first 24 games. Johnston finally scored his first VHL goal at 14:00 in the first period against Helsinki followed up with another goal several games later. With finally scoring his first pair of goals Johnston’s production is still not where he would like it to be as he is getting plenty of shots on goal as in 34 games, he has recorded 51 shots on goal for a 3.9% shooting percentage, way below the league average. Throughout 34 games Johnston has scored a pair of goals and has added 1 assist which came on the 12^th game of his career for a total of 3 points. During his offensive struggle Johnston decided to try to distract himself from his offensive struggle by developing a physical aspect to his game and has already recorded 21 hits in 34 games. Following a talk with the Calgary GM @Ricer13, about how they were doing during their slump Johnston has been doing better than ever and is excited for the chance to spend their entire career in Calgary and one day retire a wrangler. With the current roster makeup Johnston knew that this season would not be their best as they would likely struggle offensively. With this they are learning valuable lessons and improving everyday and will hopefully continue to grow and strive for the potential that was seen on draft day. The jump from the VHLM to the VHL was a pretty big culture shock for the budding sniper who went from a leading scorer in the league and a key contributor to a role player in the VHL. Lately, Johnston is making the most of this season learning as much as they can from the veterans and come the end of the season will be in a position to contribute offensively during the playoffs if they keep working hard enough!