You can drop yourself at any point in Montreal Canadiens history over the last 20 years, and the team’s need will be the same. It does not matter how good the team was the season before. It always seems like the Canadiens are in search of their next centreman. In 2026, Montreal’s biggest need is a second-line centre, but with Michael Hage waiting in the wings, the Canadiens are not desperate to make a move if it is not right.
However, in 2017, the Canadiens were desperate. Making a move out of desperation is where mistakes happen. The team traded one of their best prospects, Mikhail Sergachev, for Jonathan Drouin, who, to this point, had hardly played centre. Drouin was the 3rd overall pick in the 2013 draft, but despite being enormously talented, he has yet to show it at the NHL level. Drouin struggled to adjust to being a centre, and with the added pressure of playing in his home province, the move was wrong from the very start.
The Canadiens found their centre trade target in Tampa Bay
At the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, when the Canadiens selected Sergachev with the 9th overall pick, it was thought that the team had found their defenceman of the future. That notion was only boosted by his post-draft interviews. He carried himself as a true professional. He learned English after just five months of making the jump from Russia to the OHL with the Windsor Spitfires. He made a positive impression on the Canadiens organization the moment he walked into the building.
Sergachev made the Canadiens' opening-day roster in his first training camp, but after just four NHL games, he was sent back to the Spitfires, where he nearly averaged a point per game, finishing with 43 points in 50 games. With Sergachev back in the juniors, the Canadiens had an outstanding season, finishing first in the Atlantic Division. Montreal faltered in the opening round of the playoffs, losing to the New York Rangers in six games. After their first-round exit, the Canadiens were looking to bolster their centre-ice position and had their eyes set on a young, talented player who was struggling to get their opportunity in the NHL.
While the Canadiens were on their way to the Atlantic Division, the Tampa Bay Lightning were a young up-and-coming team, with their prospects looking to find their ground in the NHL. The most highly touted of all their prospects, Drouin, was struggling to make his mark in the NHL. Drouin dominated at the QMJHL level. After a decent first season with the Halifax Mooseheads, 29 points in 33 games, his offence exploded in his second year. Drouin finished second in the QMJHL in scoring, finishing with 105 points in 49 games. He followed that up the next season with 108 points in 46 games, only adding to the expectations that he was destined to be a superstar. Drouin made the jump to the NHL the following season, but struggled as a rookie, recording just 32 points in 70 games. Drouin’s second season with the Lightning created friction between the organization and the player.
After starting the season with the Lightning, recording eight points in 19 games, Drouin was sent down to the AHL, with general manager Steve Yzerman saying there was no timeline for his return. A day later, Drouin’s agent Allan Walsh revealed that his client had requested a trade earlier in November, which would explain the demotion. Drouin was suspended indefinitely for failing to report to the Lightning’s AHL affiliate, Syracuse Crunch, as he was told a trade was imminent. The trade never materialized, and Drouin was recalled in April and played a big role in their playoff run, recording 14 points in 17 games. The next season, trade talks had dwindled, and Drouin responded with the best season of his career. He finally established himself as a full-time NHL player, recording 53 points in 73 games. But with his entry-level contract coming to an end, the Lightning chose to sell high on the former 3rd overall pick.
How desperation cost the Canadiens a future star
On June 15th 2017, Drouin got his trade. The Canadiens acquired Drouin and a sixth-round pick, sending the Lightning Sergachev and a second-round pick in exchange. The Canadiens believed they were getting their centre of the future, and the icing on the cake was the fact he could become the franchise's next homegrown star, with Drouin growing up in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, an hour north of Montreal. The only problem with the Canadiens thinking they had found their centre was that Drouin had rarely played centre to this point in his career. In his first two years with the Mooseheads, Drouin mainly featured on the wing alongside Nathan MacKinnon. In his third season, with MacKinnon now in the NHL, Drouin moved over to centre. Up until this point in his NHL career, Drouin was a winger with the Lightning. This means Drouin’s move to centre with the Canadiens would be the first time he played that position on an every-night basis in the NHL.
The deal was doomed from the start. Drouin was coming to a new franchise, one he grew up cheering for as a kid, having to learn a new position, in a hockey market that is extremely passionate about their team. That is a ton of pressure to carry on your shoulders, especially at 22. Drouin’s first two years with the Canadiens were not a complete disaster, recording 46 and 53 points, but the team was not very good, missing the playoffs both years. Drouin just was not the centre the Canadiens had previously envisioned. He struggled at the face-off dot, winning 43.2 percent of his draws as a member of the Canadiens. Drouin's career with the Canadiens was riddled with injuries, which not only affected his play on the ice but also his mental health. He took a leave of absence in April of 2021, missing the final 12 games of the season and playoff run. The experiment ended after the 2022-23 season. Drouin’s role with the Canadiens began to diminish. He left the team in free agency, signing with the Colorado Avalanche, reuniting with his Mooseheads teammate MacKinnon.
On the other side of the coin, Sergachev blossomed into a top defenceman with the Lightning. He joined a defence core which already included Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh, taking the pressure off the young defenceman to be great right away. He recorded nine goals and 40 points in 79 games as a rookie. His offensive production dipped to 32 points in his second season, but he would achieve something Canadiens fans have been chasing since 1993. He helped the Lightning win the Stanley Cup in the 2019-20 season. Sergachev followed that up by winning another one just a year later, defeating the Canadiens in the Final. Sergachev established himself as a top defenceman in the NHL during the 2022-23 season, when he recorded a career-high 64 points in 79 games. Now with the Utah Mammoth, Sergachev is the leader of their blueline, averaging over 24 minutes a night. Drouin, on the other hand, was recently bought out by the St. Louis Blues this offseason and could potentially be on his fourth team in the last three seasons. The Canadiens, for years, struggled to identify talent, and the Sergachev/Drouin trade was another one of those instances where the team made a desperate move to upgrade their centre position only for it to blow up in their face.
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