Montreal Canadiens: Jonathan Drouin, From Saviour to Scapegoat

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.