An important off-season for Nolan

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The soon to be sophomore winger of the New York Americans is hoping to change his game significantly this off-season. Nolan scored 10 goals, and picked up a measly 6 assists playing predominantly third line minutes for the Americans last year. Fortunately for New York fans, he followed up on his poor VHL season with a much stronger WJC performance; one that should give hope for the future.

 

Here's what Nolan needs to work on to make more of an impact next year:

 

DEFENCE

 

The bottom line here is that Nolan needs to care more. He didn't play a top 6 role last year because he spends too little time working on his defensive positioning. Fellow rookie Mica Sage proves this point. Sage (recently retired) was generally considered as the less skilled forward, but his effort defensively made him the easy pick to play on the second line, ahead of Nolan. If Nolan wants to play more meaningful minutes, he’ll need to play better defence first. His minus 10 rating last year made him the worst among forwards on New York so this is easily the one area of his game where the biggest difference can be made. Question is: will it be enough to propel him to VHL stardom?

 

STRENGTH

 

Shooting the puck and finishing high percentage plays are still Nolan's strongest assets. He managed a 8.6% shooting percentage in S68 which will serve him well going forward if he can maintain that rate. The biggest problem he faced last year was maneuvering himself into those high danger areas often enough. He only managed to get 116 shots through, leaving another 42 shots to get blocked. From a turnover perspective, Nolan ranked the highest forward on his team with a 1.01 takeaway to giveaway ratio. Still, this was achieved mostly against weaker competition and it remains to be seen how well this phase of his game will translate to harder matchups. Getting a little bit stronger should help Nolan position himself better in the dirty areas to help him score more goals as well as limit some turnovers from being checked off the puck.

 

ENFORCING

 

While many people believe the enforcer role is dead and should stay dead in the VHL, this is mostly true only of pure enforcers. Players who can stand up for their teammates, get under the skin of the opposing team, all while still doing more important things at a high level, can serve their team in an important way. New York is one of those teams that could really use someone here; they only got into 11 fights last year, one of the lowest totals in the league. Nolan makes the most sense to fill this void given his size and play style. Look for him to become one of these players that teams dread to play against.

 

It’s a huge off-season for Nolan. This next season should set the path for what type of career he will have the rest of the way. For the sake of New York, let’s hope it’s a good one.

 

 

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