Allan Walsh breaks down how he believes free agency will play out for his client Jonathan Drouin and why he believes he found success with the Colorado Avalanche this season.
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17 Comments
Drouin is a top 6F. The Halifax connection with Mackinnon wasn’t just a coincidence. They thrive together on a line
Drouins success was all because of MacKinnon. If he plays for another team he will be a 4th line winger.
As an avs fan, i had been hoping pretty much ever since his career started to trend down that we would pick him up. He always had the potential to be a great player, and pairing him with MacKinnon, I think most of us knew he would be successful. Really hope that management makes every effort to keep him!
He should resign at all costs… Colorado is better for Drouin than Drouin is for Colorado
Love Allan Walsh. Very real, no fluff. Hope Drouin stays in Colorado, great for him, as a Habs fan and Montrealer it was tough to see him get so much hate.
Kind of feels like the hate Marner's getting now 🙂
Love the content, sdpn !
Dude I hope the Avs find a way to re-sign Jonathan
supposedly the pens might be kicking the tires on him. whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich could be ok. maybe
20$ per game. About what he's worth
Watched him for 5 years in Mtl,.. he was pretty much useless…slacker, floater, not engaged, weak on the puck, no shot…the media's tough on everyone, not just Jonathan….he was just bad….and lol, there's only one player in the league he can play with?
Drouin fits really well in Colorado. He looked great on the Wood-Colton line and fit really well next to Mittelstadt. Fans of other teams think he only played with MacKinnon, but that's just not true.
The top line started as Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Rantanen until Lehkonen's neck injury, then Nichushkin moved up to the top line until he failed a drug test and went back into the NHLPAP. Drouin didn't move up to the top line until January.
He didn't play well to start the season, but to be fair, he was next to RyJo and Tatar. Pretty safe to say they were the problem, not him.
I was always a fan of JD. He played up to his contract. It wasn’t like it was overpaid, but some fans acted like he was making 10 mill a year. Very happy that he went to Colorado and had a good resurgence. Best of luck to him, he’s still relatively young.
Overpaid and insecure imo…glad he’s in a better place for him though….
Can't imagine Drouin testing the free agent market unless Sakic refuses to sign him. Mackinnon helped carry Drouin's totals back up. As he showed in Montreal. his skills & mindset aren't enough to lead a team. As a complimentary player to a superstar like Mackinnon, he can be useful as long as he avoids the injury bug which is prone to do.
Drouin is the biggest bust since…….. ever.
I have often wondered, if Drouin had just swallowed his pride and played in the minors for Tampa for a while, do you suppose he'd already have two Stanley Cups under his belt now?
I wouldn't call him the comeback player of the year because if you take ANY NHL player who was playing with Josh Anderson & Christian Dvorak, then put them on a line with a top 5 player on the planet like Nathan McKinnon, ANYONE's stats will go up markedly. I remember the Bruins in the 1980's when Janney & Neely were a pair. They literally put 5 different guys on their left wing, and ALL of them scored 30+ goals projected over 80 games. Randy Burridge had his only 30+ goal season in 88-89 playing on the Janney Neely line. Ken Hodge Jr. scored 30 his rookie year playing on that line, & couldn't even make the expansion Tampa Lightning a year later. Dave Christian scored 32 goals on that line. The point being that you can take a marginal bottom 6 forward like Randy Burridge or a marginal NHL player like Ken Hodge Jr, and put them on a top line, and his production will skyrocket. To be fair to Drouin, he hasn't played with any real talent since he was young in Tampa. If I were Jonathan, I would sign a 2 or 3 year team friendly deal in Colorado, keep playing with McKinnon, and then go for one final big contract AFTER he pads a couple of straight good stat years and cash in via free agency.
For me it's just really hard to ascertain if it's worth giving him a contract. I certainly don't doubt his work ethic or his commitment, I just wonder how much playing on a line with Nathan McKinnon contributed to his success. To the point of many people in these comments, anyone who plays next to that guy is going to have a pretty good year unless they're just downright bad and don't fit in.
A perfect example is this past season with Rantanen. The dude got over a hundred points, but if you watched him most the year just gauging from the eye test he was not very good. He was extremely apathetic for a long stretches of time and for my money was downright lazy for most of the season including the playoffs. But the majority of the time he plays next to Nate so he puts up absurd point totals.
Mind you I am not saying that Miko isn't a good player, he's an incredible player. But the Miko that we saw this year was nothing like the one we saw last year in terms of sheer work ethic and making plays. And for the love of God how many shots did Miko miss this year alone?