SKATING WAS THE HARD PART FOR HABS’ DROUIN
Young player benefited from a father who chose not to push his son into hockey
Hockey Canada made cross-ice hockey mandatory last March for all players under age 7, starting this season, meaning they’ll play on a rink divided in half, skating across the ice rather than the full length.
The thinking is that young players will have more fun and develop better skills on the smaller surface, which makes sense.
Ken Campbell of The Hockey News wrote an excellent article about the change and the uproar it has caused, mainly in the Toronto area, from parents who think the decision to play crossice hockey will hurt their Little Johnny’s chances of playing for “select” six-year-old teams, not to mention the ultimate goal of making the NHL.
Someone should tell those parents that the Canadiens’ Jonathan Drouin never played organized hockey until he was 8. OK, I’ll tell the story. Drouin, who was born in SteAgathe, loved hockey from a young age — but there was one problem.
“I didn’t like skating,” Drouin said after a recent practice in Brossard. “I hated the skating part … I wasn’t good at it. When I got on the ice, I used to get off really quick. I guess when you’re a kid, you cry and you want to get off.”
That doesn’t mean Drouin stopped playing hockey. He would play road hockey “10 hours a day” and also go on the outdoor rink wearing his boots.
“I would just stand in front of the net and wait for passes or play goalie,” Drouin recalled. “At one point, my dad said, ‘If you want to play, you’re going to have to take your boots off and put some skates on and go out there. Eventually, he just threw me out there on skates and said: ‘You’re not coming off, no matter what.’
“I got used to it and kept going.”
Drouin played his first season of organized hockey at the Novice B level and recalled it was “a little rough.” But by the end of that season, his skating had caught up to the other kids as he continued to go to the outdoor rink and also play road hockey.
“My hands were first developed off the ice, but I realized that, if I wanted to be a hockey player, I needed to start skating,” Drouin said. “When you spend time at the outdoor rink, you spend time doing different stuff. I still like to do that when I’m here (at the practice rink in Brossard). I do a lot of stuff … I always want to get better.”
A common sight during the Canadiens’ training camp was Drouin still on the ice after practice had ended, stickhandling around the ice and shooting pucks into the net. Just like a kid on an outdoor rink, although now Drouin is skating in a much brighter spotlight.
Drouin will make his Canadiens debut Thursday night when the season opens in Buffalo (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN Radio 690) after being acquired this summer from the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for top defence prospect Mikhail Sergachev. In a city starving for a French-Canadian superstar, the 22-year-old Drouin certainly looks ready to fill the role. His hockey skills speak for themselves, but he’s also confident, even a little cocky, which is a good combination for success in Montreal’s hockey fishbowl.
“There’s obviously the pressure of playing in Montreal … everybody knows that,” Drouin said after the trade was made. “But for me as a player, I think I’d rather have that pressure on myself than some other places. I’m a French-Canadian and I like pressure … I like that stuff. I’ve played at the Bell Centre many times as an away guy, and just to be on the home side is going to be even better.”
The Canadiens will play their first three games on the road with stops in Washington Saturday and New York against the Rangers Sunday, before their home opener next Tuesday against Chicago.
Drouin said he first realized how good he had become at hockey in his first year with the midget Lac St. Louis Lions, when he posted 22-36-58 totals in 38 games and thought he might have a chance to play in junior “and do something with that.”
He certainly did, posting 41-64105 totals in 49 games with the QMJHL’s Halifax Mooseheads in the 2012-13 season.
The Lightning selected him with the No. 3 overall pick at the 2013 NHL Draft.
Drouin was asked if the fact his father didn’t push him into organized hockey when he was young might have helped him in the end.
“Maybe it did,” Drouin said. “He was always: ‘Whatever you want to do.’ I played tennis, I played golf. So for me, when I decided it was hockey, it was hockey for him as well, and he pushed me in a good way. He saw that I was having fun as a kid playing hockey and he saw I didn’t really like the skating part, so he pushed me a bit that way.”
It turned out to be a very good move.