Montreal Canadiens: What if Jonathan Drouin didn’t get injured?

Jonathan Drouin started the 2019-20 season on a positive note for the Montreal Canadiens and his injury set off a cascade of ailments for the team.

The. 2018-19 season saw Jonathan Drouin have his best year as a member of the Montreal Canadiens. Claude Julien moved him to the wing after spending his debut season at centre, mostly playing with Max Domi.

Drouin matched a career-high in points set back in his days with the Tampa Bay Lightning scoring 18 goals and 35 assists for 53 points. However, he knew he had more to give to take his game to the next level.

That offseason saw the 24-year-old take the initiative and reach out to Habs assistant coach Dominque Ducharme to break down his game. Drouin wanted to be better, he wanted to be all-around player Claude Julien could rely on in any situation. The puck dropped on October 3rd, 2019 and the extra work was already paying off.

Drouin was dominant to start the season, showing off not only offensive confidence with the puck, but taking care of things in his own zone before transitioning onward. It wasn’t always perfect, and the winger would, at times, find himself the victim of a turnover or giveaway. However, the difference was that Drouin made sure he was in the right position to recover from it.

The Quebec native had 7 goals and 8 assists in his first 19 games of the season while the Montreal Canadiens themselves went 11-4-3. And then the injury happened.

Drouin suffered a torn tendon in his wrist in the later portions of a game against the Washington Capitals. There was no malintent behind it. He fell on his wrist, it twisted, and the rest was history. Unfortunately, Drouin required surgery on it that required an eight-week recovery not returning until February 8th for a home game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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The Montreal Canadiens were winning while Drouin was producing and executing. In his absence, the team went 14-18-4, including two eight-game losing streaks.

Drouin’s injury isn’t the sole reason why the Habs fell so hard, but things really did start to go off the rails once he was taken out of the lineup. On the other hand, him being out of the lineup did leave room for Nick Suzuki to rise from the bottom six to the top.

The Canadiens looked more secure at the beginning of the season and really struggled with getting those timely goals later on. And when the offence was flowing, the team forgot how to defend completely, forcing Julien to instil a defence-first system that didn’t help their situation at all.

Drouin, in particular, could’ve been on the verge of a stellar season. If he continued to score at that pace, he would’ve finished the year with 30 goals and 34 assists setting a new career-high in goals and overall points. But it looked as if the stars weren’t in the proper alignment for Drouin.

After returning to the lineup, he played eight games without a point and reduced minutes before an ankle injury took him out once again.

There’s no way to guarantee the events of the season had Jonathan Drouin not gone down with an injury. You can’t deny the pure fact that he was on his way to putting up some serious numbers this year. As for the performance of the team, correlation doesn’t mean causation.

Perhaps the Montreal Canadiens would’ve taken the cliff dive anyway. Or maybe Drouin was having a deeper impact on the Habs’ performance than we initially thought.