Reliving the Drouin overtime shift from those who called the game

by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
February 22, 2017

TAMPA, Fla. – Forty-six seconds.

That was the length of Jonathan Drouin’s overtime shift on Sunday at Colorado.

It was truly a marvelous shift to watch develop. With a dogged determination, a desire to make a difference and the will to do something spectacular to help his team win, Drouin scored one of the best goals of the season and what might be one of the best regular season goals in franchise history.

So while the highlight goal was underwhelming in the coverage it received on the national level – imagine if that was Auston Matthews or Connor McDavid that did something like that – it is worth revisiting.

No better to relive shift from start to finish than through the eyes of those broadcasting the game live for the team, Rick Peckham, Dave Mishkin and Brian Engblom.

{mprestriction ids=”1,2″}

From the moment Drouin stepped on the ice and chased Blake Comeau up the ice and eventually stole the puck. That was the catalyst to the whole shift. From that point on, Drouin had the puck for nearly the rest of the shift before he capped it off with the winning goal.

”He comes on the ice, they are trying to set up a rush and he gets involved in that, then he circles back,’’ said Peckham, who called the game for Fox Sports Sun. “He just has the puck pretty much the whole time. Then he almost makes it through two defenders, finally gets stopped and (Matt) Nieto gets a hold of the puck but he doesn’t really have it and is reaching back for it. And Drouin doesn’t quit, he’s right on it and comes up with it. Very, very few players that tight to the net can come up with something like that.

“In most cases you are just shut off, you try to jam it home and get a shot on goal and go from there. But with Drouin, he can create, literally in a phone booth and he was able to. And what we had seen earlier in the game, Calvin Pickard moves so much left to right that he overcommits so he really bought the fake and Drouin really had an empty net to put it in by the time he was finally done with him. It was just amazing and at that juncture of the game.’’

Mishkin handles the play-by-play duties for the Lightning Radio network, which can be heard on 970-AM or through the team’s station on the I Heart Radio network, Lightning Power Play.

”That shift encapsulated a lot of the things we see him do over the course of a game,’’ Mishkin said. “It’s not every shift and it’s unreasonable to expect him to put all of that on display every shift. But specifically in a lot of these highlight type plays we see from him there are a lot of different elements, but a lot of it is the same. He’s like a dog after a bone with that puck. And when he gets it, he’s like a dog keeping the bone. And you combine that, it was a combination of determination and skill. A lot of guys have skill, but to combine that with the dog-bone analogy makes him a handful.

“And a lot of his highlight reel plays are where he’s freezing guys, where they are like “Holy . . . , I don’t know what he’s going to do,’ and he ends up beating them anyway. But that 3-on-3 (shift) I don’t think there was any of that, it was more like it’s third-and-goal at the 1-yardline and I’m getting in the end zone someway, somehow. The skill part was the finish, which was after he got the puck at the end of a long shift he still had the wherewithal to make a play to put it in the net.

“But maybe he doesn’t get enough credit for – and people talk about he has a high hockey IQ and high skill and shiftiness and his cut backs, all those things are talked about – but we don’t really talk about determination and being hard on the puck. But he is and when you see him game in and game you, you understand that he is hard on the puck. That play was as much about being hard on the puck, doggedly determined as it was about skill. But he displayed both on that shift, clearly.’’

Englom is the lead analyst for the broadcasts on Fox Sports Sun and he watched it all unfold while Peckham called the action next to him.

”I can’t remember if I blurted it out (on the air) or not, whether I said it or not because it’s what I thought, “Oh ….. when he (scored) it,’’ Engblom said. “Because the steal, watching the chip, I knew it was dicey because it has the chance to go the other way but I knew he had enough speed he probably can get back, so all these kind of things are racing through my head. He makes a lot of those plays that make you go, OKAY, and you have to be careful, but all I could think about was he made it, he did it, he made the move so close to the net, I didn’t think he had enough time. The steal was one thing, but to be able to make that sort of move in that amount of space and time in that short of distance is phenomenal. Not many guys can do that.’’

Drouin in overtime, when he gets his opportunities to get on the ice, is a must-see event.

“But I love it when Jo gets out there because he’s going to challenge somebody, he doesn’t give a damn who the other guy is, he’ll try to beat them. And he has enough sense that he knows when he can and he knows when he can’t. He accelerates, he changes speed, he drives them crazy. That’s the great thing about him in overtime because there is that acceleration and that step-and-a-half, he’s already got somebody in trouble and that throws any plan from the other team right out the window.

“And the steal (right before the goal) was incredible and you could tell by Nieto’s (reaction), you could just read his mind. The brilliance, and his spontaneity I don’t think there is anybody better in the game because he just has a stream of consciousness. He doesn’t think, he just sees openings. He’s like a running back who can see the daylilght.’’

When the daylight appears, even if it’s just a glimmer, he can find it. And when the sort of will and determination meet the skill, magic can happen. Just like Sunday.

Drouin’s overtime shift vs. Colorado

{/mprestriction}