Montreal Canadiens: Jonathan Drouin, From Saviour to Scapegoat

I do not envy the position that Jonathan Drouin was put in when he was traded for the Montreal Canadiens acquired him in 2017. It was one of Marc Bergevin’s famed one-for-one deals, and Drouin was immediately signed to a big contract, making him the highest paid forward on the Canadiens.

Not to mention that Drouin is a francophone, and has the ceiling of being a superstar offenceman who was traded for a blue-chip defensive prospect. That kind of pressure is immeasurable and to say that Drouin has not lived up to the hype is an understatement.

This is not meant to be an attack on Drouin and there will be an attempt to make no ad hominem attacks on the character of Drouin. If you want to hear that Drouin is a lazy, good-for-nothing waste of roster space this is probably not for you.

Jonathan Drouin was drafted third overall in 2013. Montreal whiffed pretty hard that draft, drafting Michael McCarron in the first round, then Jacob De La Rose and Zachary Fucale in the second round. The only player to get any extended time on the Canadiens was Artturi Lehkonen, taken in the second round.

Drouin was taken after Nathan MacKinnon and Aleksander Barkov, and before Seth Jones and Elias Lindholm. Looking at the stats so far for players drafted in that year, Drouin is 13th in goals, 10th in assists and 10th in points. It’s clear where he should have been drafted and someone like Sean Monahan or Bo Horvat should have taken his place.

But it is not hard to see why Drouin was taken so high. In his draft year he dazzled with the Halifax Mooseheads scoring 41 goals and 105 points in 49 games, and seemed to affirm that place with 29 goals and 108 points in 46 games the next season. He made the jump to the NHL right away.