If Habs peak at right time anything can happen: Julien
Coach is confident Jonathan Drouin can turn things around this season
The most disappointing thing for me as a coach was that I felt our team was playing its best hockey at the end of the year,” Claude Julien Canadiens coach
MONTREAL — Claude Julien has a pretty good idea why the St. Louis Blues won the Stanley Cup and it’s also the reason why he has one regret about the way last season ended for the Canadiens.
“The thing I took from it — and I’ve always believed this — is if you peak at the right time, anything can happen,” Julien said prior to teeing it up Thursday in Jonathan Drouin’s charity golf tournament at Laval-sur-leLac. “Once you get in the playoffs, it’s everybody’s opportunity if you peak at the right time.”
The Canadiens were deprived of that opportunity when they let a playoff berth slip away during the final week of the season.
“The most disappointing thing for me as a coach was that I felt our team was playing its best hockey at the end of the year,” said Julien.
Julien noted that Tampa Bay was swept in the first round of the playoffs after finishing with the best regular-season record in the NHL, while St. Louis won the Cup after they began 2019 with the worst record in the league.
“You look at Tampa Bay — and they weren’t playing their best hockey — and, as bad as (the Blues) were in the first half, they played well in the second half,” said Julien. “You can talk about a lot of things, like size, but there were players on that team that weren’t re-signed and so they didn’t have the ultimate answer. They just peaked at the right time.”
While the Canadiens had a strong half, Drouin was one player who struggled. The 24-year-old matched his career high with 53 points, but he slumped during the final third of the season. He had only eight points over the final 26 games and four of those were assists he collected in an 8-1 rout of Detroit.
Julien is confident Drouin can turn things around after a summer of hard work on and off the ice.
“I think Jonathan did a lot of good things over the offseason,” said Julien. “He’s training hard and he’s taken some steps to improve his game,” said Julien. “He’s been watching video with (assistant coach Dominique Ducharme). We had a good chat while he was doing these things. A guy who takes charge of his career and his situation is a good sign.
“He’s still a young player and that’s the exciting part of it,” added Julien. “He wants to improve and if that happens, our team will be that much better. He can be an impact player. He has all the tools, but what we want to see is consistency day in and day out. He has to get more inside and he knows that. He has the ability to make those plays and we showed him that.”
Julien said Drouin was a perimeter player down the stretch.
“I don’t think he was able to get to the inside but, when he did, he had success,” said Julien. “People forget that some players are impact players at 21 or 22 like (Connor) McDavid, but there are other guys who take a little longer to become impact players. I like his approach and his attitude and we’ll work with that.”
Drouin, whose tournament benefitted the CHUM hospital foundation, agreed with Julien’s assessment.
“I have to be less conservative and get into the dirty areas more,” said Drouin.
When asked about the reasons behind his late-season slump, Drouin said: “I wish I could tell you. I put a little too much pressure on myself when things didn’t go my way for five or six games and it carried over for 25 or 30 games until the end of the season. For me, it’s coming to the rink every day with a good attitude. I know at the end of last year, even though it wasn’t going well, I was in the gym and did my work. With the summer I’ve had and what I’ve looked at and figured out about my game, I think it’s going to be a good year.”