Montreal Canadiens: Analytics Can’t Save Jonathan Drouin Anymore

It’s a trade Montreal Canadiens fans will never be able to live down, and it’s a trade I’m sure Jonathan Drouin wishes never happened sometimes.

Yes, the financial returns from it for Drouin were great, but the mental ones were very much not, and someway somehow, I find myself talking about Drouin again, as much as every Canadiens fan, man, woman, child, animal, alien or otherwise would like to forget he ever played here.

As has been discussed to no end, there’s an aspect to Drouin’s story that is tragic just as much as his tenure here was disappointing, but that doesn’t change one thing. That Jonathan Drouin will never be the player he was expected to be when the Tampa Bay Lightning selected him third overall in the 2013 NHL Draft.

After a three-season span that saw him record just 10 goals in 136 games collectively, Drouin’s future in Montreal was pretty much set in stone, though his one in the NHL was a bit more open. Coaches and GMs alike saw potential, and thought they might be able to fix a bit of what made Drouin lose sight of his abilities with the Canadiens.

At the end of the day the skill was still evident if only ever, ever so briefly, and ultimately Drouin got an opportunity most players dream of. Playing for the Colorado Avalanche alongside superstar forward Nathan MacKinnon and one of the best supporting casts in the NHL, one that turned former Canadiens fourth-liner Artturi Lehkonen into a consistent 20-goal, 50 point threat, a role Montreal simply never gave him even a single opportunity to flourish in.

In almost every sense of the word, this was Drouin’s chance to prove a Canadiens fan base that had soured and subsequently turned on him wrong, and showcase more of what once made him such a highly sought-after prospect to begin with.

However, there’s an age-old adage I run by in sports. You can repair your body as many times as it will allow, but you can almost never repair your mind. Once an athlete is mentally shattered, it’s something that can sometimes be impossible to come back from, and in my opinion, Drouin is one such example.

After documenting his struggles with anxiety and insomnia due to the pressure of playing in Montreal (issues I relate and empathize with completely and wholeheartedly) Drouin will never be the player Canadiens fans expected of him, no matter if it’s in Montreal or Colorado.

Advanced Metrics Are a Poor Way of Judging a Players Talent

Naturally, the same old argument will be thrown my way regarding Drouin, that under the bright, ever-so-forgiven lights of advanced metrics, he’s actually a really good and effective player, but to that I’ll say one thing.

Florida Panthers GM Dale Tallon exposed Jonathan Marchessault in the 2017 Expansion Draft because he had bad advanced metric stats, in spite of potting 30 goals and 50 points and being one of the few offensively consistent players on the team.

The Vegas Golden Knights wound up claiming him as compensation for not taking Vincent Trocheck, and the rest is well… the rest, including Marchessault earning the Conn Smythe last season, defeating those very same Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final.

Point being, all I see with Drouin is one thing. 16 games, with 2 goal, 3 assists, and a -1 rating, all the while with Drouin receiving power-play and occasional top-six minutes.

Despite this, head coach Jared Bednar continues to see the good in the now 28-year old winger/once-center, and while his past few games have demonstrated the ability Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin once saw in Drouin, to say its automatically a sign he has returned is nothing but a fools hope.

Even when it became clear those goods were not only damaged but entirely shattered, Bergevin persisted in his pressuring of Drouin, something as much a product of the Montreal fanbase as it was Drouin himself unfortunately. However, before we delve too much into the present, let’s look a bit on how we got here to begin with.

The 2015-16 Season and the Rise of Mikhail Sergachev

Going into the 2016 off-season, the Canadiens had come off what was, to put it kindly, not the best of runs in 2015-16. A remarkably hot start behind star goalie Carey Price and a talented, depth-filled offense gave way after Price’s season ended early due to injury.

Backup goalie Mike Condon did what he could as starter until well… fatigue gave in and the Condon broke. While it wasn’t the worst season in team history, it was rather unfortunately filled with false positives. Former third overall pick Alex Galchenyuk broke out for 30 goals only to never approach anywhere close to those numbers again, now finding himself playing overseas with SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL.

Condon was seen as a potential NHL starter but had a fall from grace unlike any other, recording a 4.27 GAA and .863 SVP in 4 games in the ECHL (yes, the ECHL) in his final season.

For all of this, the one saving grace at least, was getting the 9th overall pick in the 2016 NHL Draft. Highlighted by the selection of franchise forward Auston Matthews first overall by the Toronto Maple Leafs, this first-round unfortunately had its fair share of whiffs, and well you’d expect the Canadiens to be one of them, right?

Surprisingly, no, at least not initially, as the Vancouver Canucks committed possibly the biggest whiff in modern-day draft history, taking defenseman Olli Juolevi fifth overall ahead of… let’s see here, Charlie McAvoy, Jakob Chychrun, Matthew Tkachuk, Clayton Keller, Tage Thompson and last but not least, defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, whom Montreal selected with the ninth overall pick.

An immensely promising and physically impounding defenseman coming out of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, Sergachev was seen as a future cornerstone of Montreal’s blue-line, one that was undergoing an identity crisis at the time with the impending departure of star defenseman P.K Subban and veteran Andrei Markov.

After an impressive training camp, Montreal made Sergachev a part of the opening night lineup, giving him a 4-game cup of coffee before sending him back to Windsor, where he posted great numbers again after 17 goals and 57 points in just 67 games the year prior.

Free Agency Departures, One-For-One Trade

So great, Montreal has a potential future star coming through the pipeline, off-season addition Alexander Radulov and veteran stars in Max Pacioretty and Carey Price got them back into the playoffs, and everything’s coming up Gravy. Surely, there isn’t a way they could possibly screw this up right? Maybe? Pretty please?

Well, unfortunately, at this time in Habs franchise history, as long as GM Marc Bergevin was a part of the picture, bad things were guaranteed to happen. Mention the positives of the Bergevin era all you want, but in my mind, there are no positives. Bergevin ran the Canadiens into the ground and then some until they could practically see the core of the Earth.

His stubborn, continued refusal to build for the future and penchant for trading away draft capitol for the likes of Steve Ott, Brian Flynn, Jon Merrill, Erik Gustafsson, and Dwight King among others, left the Habs as a team who could make the playoffs one year and then completely collapse the next.

That’s not how you build a winning hockey organization, and when things fell apart, they really fell apart, to the point where you wonder if someone sprinkled termites into the Habs team chemistry. This team was like rotten wood you find next to the beach. It smells bad, it serves no purpose, it can’t do anything, and yet Bergevin continued to trot it around on his high horse like it was an accomplishment, and he did the very same thing, with one Jonathan Drouin.

In many ways, the summer of 2017 was the end of any good the Canadiens had going for them. Bergevin lowballed both Radulov and Markov in free agency leading to them signing elsewhere with no returns to show for it, and Price would unfortunately start to return to his frustratingly inconsistent self of old.

Well, at least Sergachev is still around, right? Wrong, as Bergevin, on June 15th, 2017, dealt Sergachev in essentially a one-for-one with the Tampa Bay Lightning, in exchange for Drouin. Just Drouin. No more, no less, nothing else, not even a cookie. While it might seem like a literal eternity ago now, Drouin at the time was seen as an, as stated, promising former third-overall pick who just didn’t quite put it all together in Tampa Bay, aside from an impressive playoff performance in 15-16 and a solid follow up campaign in 2016-17.

Playing for the QMJHL’s Halifax Mooseheads however, Drouin’s numbers were quite simply video-game like, and this coupled with his potential was enough for Bergevin to take a chance on the Sainte-Agathe native.

2018-19 and the Beginning of the End

Now, I’ll admit, I was at first really intrigued and to an extent excited to see Drouin come to Montreal. For all the issues we know of now, Drouin had an ability to make a play where you just sit there and go “If he wanted to he could do whatever he wanted with the puck and you could never touch him”, and those same plays were evident in parts during his first few seasons in Montreal, though unfortunately, not nearly enough.

While not particularly mind-blowing numbers, Drouin recorded 45+ points in each of his first two seasons in Montreal, even with a garish -28 rating in his first season as the team sunk to the bottom of the NHL standings in 2017-18. In 2018-19, things seemed to be getting better, but as Canadiens fans would come to understand, this was somehow already the beginning of the end for Drouin.

The 2018-19 Habs were a surprising squad in many ways, as a hastily slapped together lineup put together one of the most enjoyable and exciting seasons in the Canadiens recent history,  even if Montreal did ultimately fall short of the post-season by just a couple of points.

Former Arizona Coyotes prospect Max Domi exploded for a 72-point season which he has, much like Galchenyuk, never come close to reaching again, Tomas Tatar did as Tomas Tatar does posting 25 goals and 58 points, and rookie Jesperi Kotkaniemi showcased promise which the Canadiens unfortunately never capitalized on, eventually losing him to the Carolina Hurricanes via offer sheet where he has since begun to flourish in a top-six role.

2023-24 and Beyond: What Does the Future Hold for Jonathan Drouin?

No matter how much longer Drouin has left in the NHL or professional hockey in general, there will always be that one coach, or scout, or person he met at the grocery store who will desperately and I mean desperately try to find the sliver of good in the now 28-year old.

However, as I’ve mentioned in my past writings, at this point trying to find the positives with Drouin, for me personally, is less grasping at straws and more akin to grasping at the concept of straws, and I think that summarizes enough of how Drouin’s career has progressed and subsequently gone off the rails, no matter how much fans and analysts alike try to shovel coal into the train as it goes off the rails.

As the 2022-23 NHL season continues on, we’re slowly but surely realizing who are the cream of the crop Cup Contenders and who are still a few years away, and in spite of continued strong performances from the Colorado Avalanche and occasionally, the Montreal Canadiens, it seems as though Jonathan Drouin, will continue to drift as the one player in which you truly, shouldn’t let advanced metrics fool you. 3 Points in 15 games is all I see.

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