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.

Trade for Sergachev

Montreal ended the 2015-2016 campaign with a pretty high draft pick, 9th overall. And with that selection, they picked Mikhail Sergachev. Sergachev only ended up playing 4 games in a call up on Montreal in 2016-2017.

Marc Bergevin did his favourite trick of flat out lying to the media, before doing the exact thing that he said he wouldn’t do. He did the same thing with P.K. Subban just the year before. Now, to be fair, trading Sergachev for Drouin was not exactly a deal to get rid of the team’s future to help the team now, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a bad trade.

Sergachev did what Drouin could not, and broke into a very good Tampa Bay defence corp and has played basically a whole season every season since being acquired by the Lightning. He had his best offensive year in his first year with 9 goals and 40 points, but has broken 30 points in each of his seasons, and is on pace to break that again in this shortened year.

Drouin has had a tumultuous time in Montreal. Looking at the numbers, it doesn’t look awful. 13 goals and 46 points in his first year, 18 goals and 53 points in his second. But that doesn’t account for the fact that Drouin is about as streaky as a hockey player can be.

When he is on, he is good to great, but when he is off he is practically invisible. And that is ultimately the problem with Drouin. Even at his best, he does not provide anything but offence. He is not physical, not great defensively and does not seem like a leader on the team.

Each season in Montreal, he has been a negative in the plus/minus. Plus/minus isn’t the best measure of success, but on a long term scale, it can be helpful to identify trends, and this is not a great trend for Drouin.

Last year was a great example. In his first 13 games, Drouin scored 7 goals and 12 points. Then, in November, Drouin suffered a wrist injury that kept him out until February, where he didn’t register a point in 8 games. In the play-in and play-offs, Drouin scored only 1 goal.

Again, the problem is that Drouin offers nothing but offense, but he is not good enough at putting points on the board for that. Patrik Laine is a player that is notorious for lacking in the defensive department, but there aren’t many players better than putting the puck in the net playing now.

The other aspect is that contract. Drouin was the highest paid forward on Montreal before Josh Anderson was signed to the same amount per year. That will change next year, of course, when Brendan Gallagher’s new contract kicks in.

Even then, can you argue that Drouin should be tied for the second-highest forward on Montreal? It is more than Max Pacioretty ever made in a Canadiens uniform.

Drouin does have 21 assists in 44 games, but 9 of those assists are secondary assists. It is hard to judge assists, especially as primary assists and secondary assists are weighed the same. Basically, a primary assist is where you pass the puck to the guy that scores. Secondary assists are where you pass it to a guy who passes it to another guy that scores a goal.

More often than not, players that get secondary assists are not really involved in the play. Sure, there are some spectacular secondary assists, but it is hard to judge how much worth a secondary assist is.

Time to move on from Drouin?

It seems like Marc Bergevin should let go of his ego on this trade. It is hard to see why Drouin continues to be this far up the line-up and get consistent ice time. I don’t want to put actions or words in Bergevin’s or Ducharme’s mouths, but unless they see something we don’t, it seems like Bergevin cannot let this trade go.

If Bergevin keeps Drouin up in the line-up, Drouin can still put up some points and the trade doesn’t seem as bad analytically. But the eye test and the stats don’t line up, no matter how Bergevin tries.

But, shipping off Drouin is not as easy at it would seem. For the same reason that people don’t want Drouin on Montreal, people don’t want Drouin on other teams, especially with that contract. He still gets paid $5.5 million until 2023 and the last two years include a modified no trade clause. In a flat cap, good luck finding someone that can and will take on that contract.

There is not an easy way out of this. To move Drouin, Bergevin would have to add something really good just to get rid of him. Think of Tyler Johnson. The Lightning could not move Johnson for anything, and even placing him on waivers for anyone to claim. And Johnson has better stats and is paid less.

The worst thing is that Drouin keeps flashing these moments of brilliance. He was genuinely great to start the year last year. His skill is off the charts, but he rarely shows it. It is hard to call it laziness, as so many people want to.

Drouin seems to be the player that always rode his immense skill through the lower leagues, always being the best player on the team. Its like the kid that was really smart in elementary school and high school. They never had to study and never really had to learn, so when it came to the higher education, they don’t know how to study and learn.

Similar to how those kids can possibly not reach their full potential, this seems like it could be the case with Drouin. It might not be that he is lazy, but that he doesn’t know how to work.

Can Drouin turn this around? Maybe, but every year it seems more and more unlikely. Definitely he should not have been signed to that big and long of a contract. Bergevin seemed blinded by the potential and francophone-ness and is unwilling to give up on the trade and call it a loss for the good of the team. He can be a good depth piece, but not at that price and not consistently in the top 6.

Drouin either needs to step up his production and become more consistent, or add some dimensions to his game to make him valuable when not putting up the points.