Relaxed Bateman hitting his stride
Posted: Tuesday, March 14, 2000, 3:00 p.m.
BRAMPTON, Ont. – As the Battalion continue their March to the Playoffs, centre Jeff Bateman is playing his best hockey of the season.
The 18-year-old Belleville native is enjoying an 11 game point scoring streak in which he has scored 12 points (3 goals, 9 assists). Since returning from a four-game stint on the injured list in mid-January, Bateman has been on fire offensively, racking up 28 points (13 goals, 15 assists) in 21 games. The sophomore forward is Brampton’ second leading scorer with 60 points (22 goals, 38 assists) in 60 games.
“I’m just taking care of the little things,” Bateman said recently before practice. “I’m not worrying about putting points up now. I’m just worrying about the team and taking care of my job first and I guess the points are just coming.”
Bateman, selected by the Battalion in the third round (41st overall) of the 1998 OHL Priority Selection, believes that a knee injury that he suffered January 9 against the Windsor Spitfires was a blessing in disguise.
“The injury gave me time to think, settle down and not worry about hockey so much for a week and a half,” he said. “So when I came back I was ready to go with a brand new attitude. I just wanted to go out there and help the team as I could and I guess that’s when I started playing better.”
Drafted in the fourth round (126th overall) of last summer’s NHL Entry Draft by the Dallas Stars, Bateman’s experience at the Stars camp didn’t translate to success once the Battalion season got going. Bateman, who scored 60 points (23 goals, 37 assists) in 68 games in his rookie year, didn’t notch his first goal of the year until the 11th game of the season.
When he came back to Brampton after his stint in the Stars camp, Bateman thought “maybe I would put up more goals, more points than I did last year so I think when I came back and had such a slow start, it just discouraged me so much that I didn’t know how to handle it. I expected way too much of myself, way too early in my career.”
Bateman credits Battalion Head Coach Stan Butler with helping him get his game back on track. “He told me that Dallas doesn’t really care about how many points I score, they just want to see how I develop as a person and as a player on the ice. (He said) I had to keep working on my off-ice training and my defensive responsibilities and the points would come.”
Bateman admits that as the regular season winds down and the playoffs loom ahead for the Battalion that he feels “good, not as tired as I was last year.” Bateman and the other Battalion veterans are also helping rookie standouts such as Jay McClement and Matt Grennier pace themselves in order to be ready for the high-pressure hockey ahead in the post-season. “Those guys are going to play a key role in our playoff run, so we have to work those guys in, get them mentally tough and ready to go for that extra month or so in the playoffs.”
As a player who made history by becoming the first Brampton player to have been selected in the NHL Entry Draft, Bateman also had advice for the numerous Battalion players who may get selected this year, particularly highly ranked prospects Raffi Torres, Rostislav Klesla and Tyler Hancock.
“You have to go in with an open mind if you don’t where you will be (selected),” he said. “It’s so stressful on a young kid. Those guys (Torres, Klesla and Hanchuck) should go high so they’re relatively set, but going in on draft day nothing is for sure: trades can happen at any time.”
Bateman said, “he had no clue” that he would be drafted and didn’t even attend the draft in Boston. “When I got a phone call and they said I went in the fourth round I was ecstatic. I had plane tickets and a hotel room about two months before (the draft) and then nobody contacted me so I decided not to go and sit there for nine rounds and not get picked and put a damper on a pretty good rookie season. So I just stayed home.”
Bateman, who set team records on January 23 against the Kitchener Rangers for most goals (4) and points (5) in a game, admitted that his time in the Dallas camp with players like Mike Modano was “amazing, it was such an eye opener. You what see what those guys have to go through every day of their careers, it just makes you realize how much harder you have to work down at this level.”
