Confident Burke off to great start with Sting
You gotta believe, and Nolan Burke does.
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You gotta believe, and Nolan Burke does.
The Sarnia Sting forward credits his great start this season to being confident.
“When I’m playing bad hockey, I have no confidence out there,” he said. “I think the biggest thing for me – and I think a lot of the guys would say the same thing – is if you have confidence, you feel like you have a lot more time, you feel like your shot’s better, you feel like you’re making better plays.
“I think the biggest thing is confidence for me.”
The Peterborough native leads the Sting with a career-high five goals and a plus-six rating in only four games.
He was one goal behind the Ontario Hockey League’s co-leaders, Calum Ritchie and Ryan Stepien of Oshawa, before Thursday’s action.
Burke, who’ll turn 19 in December, came into this season motivated to do well. The COVID-19 pandemic cost him his NHL draft season.
“This is my last shot to go out there and prove myself,” said Burke, who could be an overager in 2022-23. “I think this year I’ve just played a lot smarter, tried to calm things down.
“I’d gotten rewarded for it the first game. Now I’ve just got to keep going. I can’t let this stop now.”
Before the season, Burke had six goals and seven assists in 57 career games in the OHL.
He began this campaign with a two-goal game in Windsor. He scored two more last Saturday against London.
Sting head coach Alan Letang downplays the role of confidence in Burke’s hot start.
“Confidence is important, but you make your own confidence by preparing properly and doing all the little things off the ice and on the ice that make you successful,” Letang said. “Obviously it helps when you get off to a good start with a couple goals, but he was focused on trying to come back from an injury, so he was doing a lot of extra stuff off the ice. I’m sure some of that stuff’s translated into his early success.”
The pre-season injury sidelined Burke for the first four exhibition games. He worked hard to get in shape while he was out and maybe his fitness has fueled his strong start, Letang said.
Letang has spoken with Burke about how to keep his success going.
“‘Why have you had this start? Why have you been successful?’” Letang asked. “You’ve worked hard off the ice, you’ve done all the stuff before and after games to make sure your injury doesn’t come back, you’ve worked really hard on the ice and in practice to keep your conditioning.”
Letang likes how Burke is scoring his goals in a variety of ways. He’s gotten two on breakaways, but he’s also scored by getting to the front of the net.
“You find different ways to produce, you find different ways to have success and different ways to score goals,” Letang said. “If you’re just the guy that wants the one-timer all the time, well, we all can’t be (Alex) Ovechkin.
“You need to manufacture offence in different ways where it’s outworking guys in the corner, getting to the net, jumping through holes and using a little bit of your speed. He’s had some success and he’s done well.”
The Sting (1-1-2-0) will host the Guelph Storm (1-3-1-0) at 7:05 p.m. Friday at Progressive Auto Sales Arena.
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