SAVANNAH, GA – With the ECHL season winding down and only 21 games left in Savannah’s season, it is time for us to start looking at some of this year’s skaters a little bit closer. Today that skater is Logan Drevitch.
Logan Drevitch at Greenville Swamp Rabbits – Photo courtesy of Rebecca DaSilva
The quick stats on Drevitch show a skater producing at a bit over half a point per game mark (.56 points per game). He currently sits with eight goals and 19 assists on the year and a shooting percentage of 8.2 percent. That pace puts him at a 39-point mark with 12 goals and 27 assists to end the year. However, looking at just those stats would give you an incorrect assessment of how well Drevitch has actually produced for Savannah this year.
The ECHL is, at its core, a development league, and a player like Drevitch shows you the success it maintains at improving the professional careers and hockey skill sets of players in this league. As we mentioned above, Drevitch’s immediate stats impact his club. They are not something that immediately jumps out at someone using only the on-paper stats to tell Drevitch’s story. In fact, if we compare his play from the start of the season to his play now, we see the improvement he has made in his first professional year.
Enough is not being said about Logan Drevitch’s play since January 1st,2023. In 22 games he is currently at a .82 points per game average while having a shooting percentage of 11.9%. On top of that he has 18 points (5G & 13A) in that same time frame. #TheHauntBegins
— Thomas Ponné Thrift (@FPHGhostPirates) February 20, 2023
Drevitch has maintained the same high energy level that he plays with throughout this season. However, early in the season, Drevitch found himself scratched a few games. Part of the reason for that seemed to be the number of penalties he was taking. Drevitch sits at 61 PIM for the year, but if you look further into that, you will find that most of those penalties came in the first half of his season. Drevitch has still taken 25 since the beginning of January in 22 games played. This works out to a 1.13 penalty minute average per game, but it is down from his first half of the year penalty pace, which was 1.27. In his favor, however, he has shown multiple times his ability to draw penalties out from other teams by playing a style of gritty, high-energy hockey. As of late, this has tended to outweigh the penalty minutes he takes and gives Savannah more opportunity on the man advantage. Which in turn elevates the team’s chances of scoring goals.
Now, let’s go back to his initial stats on the year. I mentioned his shooting percentage for the season is 8.2 percent. If you split that into pre and post-January, it tells an entirely different story. Drevitch’s first half of the season saw him shooting at a 5.5 percent clip with only three goals. Since January, he has taken fewer shots and scored more goals, shooting at 11.9 percent in those 22 games. Furthermore, out of Drevitch’s 19 assists on the year, 13 of those have come since the beginning of January.
LOGAN DREVITCH THE HERO!#TheHauntBegins #GoGhostPirates pic.twitter.com/WAQ8jFDQLt
— Savannah Ghost Pirates (@SavGhostPirates) January 12, 2023
If you take both of those above stats, you see a player playing the back half of his season at .82 points per game average. If he continues at this pace, Drevitch would be looking to end the year with 45 total points, with 35 coming since the beginning of 2023.
Taking that one step further, if he were to play at a similar pace in an entire 72-game ECHL season, he would end a year with closer to 60 points. This is a massive impact strictly on the offensive production side, but Drevitch’s impact goes further than that. Drevitch adds to his offensive production with the tenacity and physicality with which he plays the game of hockey. Although he is only 5’9 and 170 pounds, Drevitch has never been afraid to step up to any skater on the ice and remind them what it’s like to play against his club. He battles for his bit of the ice every shift and is not afraid to be one of the first skaters to jump into a battle on the corners.
For a league centered around skater development, watching Drevitch’s improvements as this season unfolds has been an extreme pleasure. It showcases just what the ECHL can do for a young skater, and I do not think Drevitch’s improvements will end here. He will be a skater for other clubs to look out for wherever his professional career may take him.
