Note: Welcome to SB Nation NHL’s top 25 players under age 25 series! We’ll be covering each player from No. 25 to No. 1 over the next few weeks leading up to training camp time. See the complete list and information on how the rankings were compiled.
NHL’s best players under age 25 for 2017: Jonathan Drouin’s breakout year puts him at No. 24
The 2013 No. 3 overall pick had a strong season and will look to have another in a new city.
Photo by Matt Kincaid/Getty Images
It’s safe to say that Jonathan Drouin’s NHL tenure hasn’t been without bumps and bruises. The talented 22-year-old left winger is at No. 24 on our list, but he’ll start the upcoming season in a new home in Montreal after a blockbuster trade opened the 2017 NHL offseason.
Drouin is a former No. 3 overall pick from 2013 who officially joined the NHL in 2014 with his draft club, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The winger has shown extreme growth over his past three seasons, and there’s hope that Drouin will make the jump from solid top-six forward to NHL superstar with his pure offensive talent.
The winger has had much to prove in his three seasons so far in the NHL, and he shone bright this past season. Drouin put up a career-high 53 points in 73 games with the Lightning in 2016-17, good enough for third-highest on the team. Since his rookie year in 2014, Drouin’s points-per-game pace has climbed from 0.46 to 0.48 and finally to 0.73 in his breakout year last season.
Though Drouin has played in just 164 games to date over his first three seasons, averaging 55 games per season, the Lightning very much needed his services last year. While Tampa Bay’s injury woes left the Lightning without top producers like Steven Stamkos and Tyler Johnson, Drouin stepped in as a top scorer for the team. Drouin’s average time on ice also spiked by more than three minutes from previous seasons as the 22-year-old was tasked with more responsibilities.
The Lightning, however, were always going to be in a cap crunch this offseason, which meant a key player had to go. Tampa Bay valued players like Johnson and Ondrej Palat more, and paid them like it too, as it sunk a total of $10.3 million per season between the two forwards.
Drouin, to his credit, did get a sweet six-year, $33 million contract with the Canadiens after the dust settled on the trade that brought him to Montreal in exchange for top defenseman prospect Mikhail Sergachev. It’s a fresh start for Drouin this season, and he’ll have the chance to shine in Montreal.
Past accomplishments
Drouin is no real stranger to being the top of a draft class, as his hockey career really kicked off in 2011 when he was drafted at No. 2 overall by the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL. He totaled 242 points in 128 games with Halifax over the course of three seasons, all the while being drafted by the Lightning at No. 3 overall in 2013, behind Nathan MacKinnon and Aleksander Barkov.
While Drouin showed promise in the run up to the 2013-14 season, the Lightning decided to keep him in the QMJHL for one more year. A hand injury in 2014 derailed his opening to the next season by a few weeks and Drouin finally made his NHL debut on Oct. 20, 2014.
Injury struck again in the 2015-16 season that relegated him to the AHL, but Drouin’s displeasure with being unable to crack the NHL lineup came to a head in Jan. 2016. Drouin had reportedly asked for a trade the previous November, and he was ultimately suspended later in January for failing to show for an AHL game amidst trade rumors. Drouin played just 21 games that season and registered just 10 points.
The forward did crack the Lightning lineup as a full-time member of the team last season in his breakout year. Among his other accomplishments, Drouin won gold with Team Canada’s Under-18 team in 2012 and won the fastest skater event at the 2015 NHL Skills Competition during All-Star weekend.
Future impact
It’s hard to say that Drouin’s relationship with the Lightning was ever repaired after the 2015-16 season, but the 22-year-old will get a fresh start with the Canadiens this upcoming year. We ranked Alex Galchenyuk at No. 25 on our list, and Drouin’s addition to Montreal’s lineup alongside the 23-year-old should jumpstart the Canadiens’ offense.
Though Montreal has long asked if Galchenyuk should start at center or on the wing, adding a winger like Drouin to the offense might put that question to bed. Drouin himself has played some center, but he broke out of his shell last year as a winger and his faceoff numbers are too low to place him as a top-six center.
Last season Drouin excelled at the power play, and it’s where 26 of his 53 points on the season came from. The Canadiens were middle-of-the-pack last year on the power play with a 19.57 percentage of success, so adding Drouin into the special teams mix makes the Canadiens a stronger team from the outset.
The flip side of that, however, is that Drouin scored 27 even strength points in 73 games. While that number doesn’t stand out immediately, Drouin played his most minutes on a line with Valtteri Filppula and Brian Boyle, according to Data Rink, and the change of scenery could very well net Drouin more productive line mates.
Is this ranking too high or too low?
If Drouin didn’t break out in the 2016-17 season, the 22-year-old likely wouldn’t have made this list at all. Last year was a big season for Drouin, and one that put the former No. 3 overall pick back on the map after his showcase of extreme offensive skill.
That being said, should Drouin falter in Montreal this year after taking a big step forward, this ranking could very well be too high. One big season alone isn’t enough to solidify Drouin’s place in the top 25 players under 25 moving forward, and the forward will have to have another big outing should he want to make the cut next year.
Highest vote: No. 14
Lowest vote: Not ranked
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