Montreal Canadiens Jonathan Drouin Poised For Breakout Next Season

The Montreal Canadiens made a huge trade to acquire Jonathan Drouin from the Tampa Bay Lightning two years ago. He struggled to end last season, but is poised for a huge breakout next year.

The Montreal Canadiens acquired Jonathan Drouin from the Tampa Bay Lighting for left defenceman Mikhail Sergachev in the summer of 2017. The Habs had just seen Alex Radulov head to Texas via free agency after scoring 18 goals and 54 points in his lone season in Montreal.

It was hoped that the much younger Drouin, who was 22 at the time of the trade, would be able to replace the offence that was lost when Radulov signed with the Dallas Stars. Considering that Radulov was 30 when he played for the Habs, it was a reasonable conclusion.

Drouin had just set career highs with the Lightning, scoring 21 goals and 53 points, one less point than Radulov. The Ste-Agathe native quickly signed a six year contract with the Canadiens with an annual cap hit of $5.5 million.

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His inaugural season with the Canadiens did not go exactly as planned. First of all, Drouin was moved to centre, a position he hadn’t played since he was in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. Drouin absolutely dominated the QMJHL as a centre, but it is much more difficult playing that position in the Bell Centre than it is at the Centre Henry-Leonard in Baie Comeau.

Drouin struggled to take on the defensive responsibilities required to play the middle at the NHL level every night. His offence took a step back as well, with his point total dropping from 53 with the Lightning to 46 with the Canadiens.

Drouin was moved back to left wing last season, and scored 53 points once again. However, there are several reasons to believe that Drouin can not only match his career high for a third time, but also score much more than 53 points next season.

Part of that is just based on his age. Players in the National Hockey League often have their best offensive seasons between the ages of 23-27. Drouin just turned 24 so he is hitting his prime scoring age right now. It would not be a surprise to see someone his age have a spike in scoring next season.

If you look at players drafted the year before him, several of them just had by far their best offensive seasons. Drouin was taken 3rd overall in the 2013 NHL Draft. Tomas Hertl was taken in the 1st round of the 2012 Draft, and just set a career high with 76 points. His previous best was just 46. Teuvo Teravainen, Tom Wilson and defencemen Jacob Trouba and Morgan Rielly just had huge spikes in offence during their 24-year-old seasons as well.

Drouin will be 24 next season and could follow in the footsteps of several players taken a year before him in the draft, and have a career year.

Looking at his numbers from last season, it appears his offence returned to what it was in Tampa Bay, but if you look a little deeper, he scored at a much better rate for most of the season.

The 2018-19 season started extremely well for Drouin and the Montreal Canadiens. In fact, when Drouin scored a pair of goals to go with two assists against the Winnipeg Jets on February 7th, he had 17 goals and 46 points in 55 games played.

Over a full season, that is a pace that would have seen Drouin score 25 goals and 69 points. However, he did not keep that pace for the rest of the season. Not only did he slow down, he basically stopped scoring altogether.

In his final 26 games, Drouin had just one goal and seven points. Included in that was a four assist night in a blowout against the Detroit Red Wings. That means he had one goal and two assists in 25 of his last 26 games.

How does a player go from a 70 point pace to someone who can not score at all? Well, Drouin vaguely mentioned on locker clean out day that we would soon find out. A few weeks later there was a report that he had surgery to fix a fractured nose.

It was a bit of an odd explanation as there was no evidence the injury occurred in February and he did not miss any time for it last season. If we buy his argument though, we have to also understand he is closer to the 70-point-pace player than the one who couldn’t get a point in the last third of the season.

He showed at the age of 23 that he could score at an impressive pace for two-thirds of a season. He should be able to prove at 24 that he can play at that level for a full season. If he does, Max Domi will have someone joining him in the 70 point club with the Canadiens next season.