Coach Julien plans to try Drouin at right wing

When the Canadiens’ Jonathan Drouin arrived for practice Tuesday morning in Brossard, he looked up at the lines written on a board in the locker-room and realized he was no longer a centre.

Forty-four games into the season, Canadiens management seems to have finally realized the 22-year-old Drouin is not ready to be a No. 1 centre in the NHL.

In the 39 games Drouin has played (he missed one with the flu and four with a lower-body injury), he has only six goals and 15 assists to go along with a minus-19 rating, while winning 40.4 per cent of his faceoffs. Through Monday’s games, 238 players in the NHL had scored more goals than Drouin and 185 had more points.

This isn’t what Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin was hoping for when he traded 19-year-old defenceman Mikhail Sergachev to the Tampa Bay Lightning last summer in exchange for Drouin and then signed the Ste-Agathe native to a six-year contract worth US$33 million. To make matters worse, Sergachev has eight goals and 18 assists and is plus13 in 44 games with the Lightning.

Drouin was a winger, not a centre, with the Lightning after they selected him with the third pick at the 2013 NHL draft and that’s where he finds himself with the Canadiens, skating Tuesday at right wing on a line with Jacob de la Rose at centre and Alex Galchenyuk on the left. The Habs are in action Wednesday when they visit Boston (7:30 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN Radio 690).

“We haven’t really talked about it,” Drouin said Tuesday when asked if there had been a discussion with coach Claude Julien about the move. “I saw the lines this morning and stepped on the ice.”

Julien is hoping de la Rose can take care of the defensive responsibilities between Drouin and Galchenyuk, who combined are minus-39.

Galchenyuk leads the Canadiens in scoring with 26 points, but is minus-20, while de la Rose has one goal and three assists in 25 games and is minus-2, while winning only 38.5 per cent of his faceoffs.

“You’ve got a centre that may be a bit little more defensive when you’re in your own end and I want them (Drouin and Galchenyuk) to play in the other end,” Julien said. “So the quicker we can kill the play the better and let those two other guys use their offence to their advantage. So that’s what I’m hoping, whether it happens or not.”

Julien is also hoping de la Rose can find some offence that has been missing from his game since the Canadiens selected the six-footthree, 210-pounder in the second round (34th overall) at the 2013 NHL draft. In 89 career games with the Canadiens, de la Rose has only five goals and six assists.

“He’s a two-way player,” Drouin said about de la Rose. “Obviously, Rosie maybe hasn’t showed his offensive stuff that much here, but I’ve played against him in Sweden in U-18, world juniors. He had offensive skills playing with (Filip) Forsberg and those guys. He’s a big body, wins his draws, but still has the offensive skills to create chances and put the puck in.

“I think Rosie has been playing very well and to have a big body like that for me and Chucky is going to be very nice. I’ve played winger a lot in the past years, so I’m used to it. Nothing really changes offensively if you’re a centre or a winger, you’re still strolling in the offensive zone, so that doesn’t change.”

But Drouin will have fewer defensive responsibilities in his own end, which Julien is hoping will free him up for more offence.

The biggest question is why it took 44 games to finally make the move.