Drouin has learned much from his tumultuous first season with Canadiens
Canadiens fans had some big expectations for Jonathan Drouin after GM Marc Bergevin acquired him from the Tampa Bay Lightning on June 15, 2017, in exchange for defenceman Mikhail Sergachev. Later that summer, Drouin went to Montreal’s Old Port to meet some fans and shoot a video for the team’s website. One fan said he expected Drouin to score 25 goals, another predicted 39 goals and a third said he expected 50 goals and that the Canadiens would advance to at least the third round of the NHL playoffs. Drouin ended up with 13 goals, 33 assists and a minus-28 while the Canadiens finished 28th in the overall standings and missed the playoffs. It was a season to forget for Drouin and the team. Before the start of this season, Drouin’s agent, Allan Walsh, was asked what’s the biggest lesson his client could learn from last season. “What I tell players all the time is you need to have short memories and leave the game at the rink,” Walsh said. “So what you want is a player coming into the rink in the morning with a clear head and focused on what he has to do that day. And if it’s a game day, come in and prepare for the game, play the game, and when you get in your car and you leave the rink you’ve got to forget about the game. You have to have an on/off button and use it. “I think with Jo, you can talk about what it’s like to be a French-Canadian hockey player playing in Montreal, but all the talk in the world isn’t going to prepare you for what the experience is really like,” the agent added. “And I think you have to go through that experience and he did. And then you put in a summer of hard training and you get yourself ready and I think Jonathan and any player in this business will be much more prepared for what the season entails the second time around.” Heading into Saturday night’s game against the New York Rangers at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SN, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio), Drouin has 9-11-20 totals in 25 games and is minus-2. Drouin has been much better at left wing on a line with Max Domi and Andrew Shaw than he was last season when the Canadiens tried to make him a No. 1 centre. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, but Drouin has been making strides. On Friday, Drouin was named winner of the Molson Cup for the month of November, based on the three-star selections. Drouin was named the first star twice in November and in 14 games posted 6-6-12 totals. He also tied a personal best with a five-game point streak, during which he posted 3-4-7 totals. Drouin will be presented with the Molson Cup before Saturday’s game. “There’s a couple of lessons,” Drouin said after practice Friday when asked what he learned from last season. “I think the first one is there’s so much stuff going on, on the outside. You know about the Twitter and the Instagram, but everyone’s on you. It doesn’t matter where you are, it’s about the Canadiens and it’s always going to be like that. Sometimes, you just need to push that aside and live your own life and outside the rink when you go out it’s not hockey. Because every time you leave home to go to the restaurant or go do groceries, it’s hockey. So you got to find a way to balance everything out. “Sometimes last year you’d leave the rink and it’s five o’clock and you go to the grocery store and somebody spoke about hockey,” he added. “Then you go home and you think about hockey. We do think about hockey, but you got to find a way to balance and live your life and come back to the rink and just focus on that game.” The Canadiens are now focused on ending a five-game losing streak (0-3-2) when they face the Rangers Saturday night. Drouin has 2-1-3 totals during the five-game slump. “It shouldn’t affect how we play, but there’s definitely a lot of pressure,” Drouin said. “We’ve lost five in a row and we’ve fallen down in the standings. That’s not what you want with the way we started the season.”