Tampa Bay Lightning trade Jonathan Drouin, swaping the talented forward for defensive prospect

By Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
June 15, 2017

The Lightning are a team oozing with top caliber forward talent.

That took a big hit on Thursday as Tampa Bay moved talented winger Jonathan Drouin to the Montreal Canadiens in a move that caught many around the league by surprise.

In exchange for Drouin, the Lightning receive prospect defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, the ninth overall pick in the 2016 draft. There are conditional draft picks involved as well – if Sergachev fails to appear in at least 40 games next season, including playoff games, Tampa Bay will receive the Washington Capitals second round pick (previously acquired by Montreal) in the 2018 NHL Draft while Tampa Bay would send a 2018 sixth-round pick in 2018 to the Canadiens.

Tampa Bay clearly coveted a high-profile defensive prospect to add to the organization and used Drouin to acquire one. It came at a high price, even for a prospect as highly regarded as Sergachev.

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Drouin has an elite skill set and not many players in this league can do what Drouin does with the puck on his stick. He’s as creative of a playmaker as there is in the game, capable of setting up plays sometimes out of what looked like nothing.

It’s hard to find that type of talent and teams that do tend to hang on to them for a long time.

So why did the Lightning choose to part ways with this type of potential generational player?

Quite simply, Drouin failed to find his way with the organization and the relationship has been somewhat rocky and contentious from the beginning. It’s not anything that couldn’t have been put aside to make it amicable relationship with a player of Drouin’s talent level, something that last season proved as Drouin started to emerge as the elite player Tampa Bay drafted with the third overall pick in 2013.

It was a path that took much longer than many would have ever expected for a player of his talent. He didn’t make the team out of training camp in 2013. Drouin was locked in on the fourth line for most of his rookie season and a frequent healthy scratch during the 2015 run to the Stanley Cup Final. An offensive dynamo was rarely put in situations to utilize his skills on the power play that season.

Then it all came to a head during the 2015-16 season when his role was still reduced and eventually sent to the American Hockey League. That set off a series of events that saw Drouin walk away from the organization amidst a trade demand that went public. That stalemate lasted nearly two months and extended past the trade deadline without Drouin’s request being met.

All that was put aside when he returned to Syracuse and was promoted back to the NHL at the end of the season and became a force in the postseason helping the Lightning back to the Eastern Conference finals.

It all seemed like water under the bridge this season with his play while reaching the 20-goal and 50-point mark for the first time.

But truth be told, it was never going to go away.

Could it have worked long term? Yes, last year showed that.

But when you start to factor in his contract situation as a pending restricted free agent, the expansion draft situation and his contract demands – Drouin signed a six-year, $33 million contract within hours of the trade – and how that might fit with the structure with the Lightning, why Drouin was moved starts to come in to focus.

But it’s still difficult to fathom moving a player with this type of talent, one that Tampa Bay may end up regretting down the line, especially in dealing him to a division rival, something that general manager Steve Yzerman brushed aside when asked about it during a conference call on Thursday, simply stating he always looks at “what is best’’ for the Lightning.

Perhaps the biggest shame in seeing Drouin moved to Montreal is that we will never know if the tandem of Steven Stamkos and Drouin on the same line would have been as dynamic as many of us thought. The two were not a consistent pairing on the same line for a myriad of reasons – most notably Drouin’s slow emergence under head coach Jon Cooper and the health of Stamkos. The thought of those two terrorizing teams throughout the league was likely the deciding factor in choosing Drouin with the third pick in 2013 and passing over Seth Jones.

Now it’s something we’ll never see – except maybe at the All-Star game, which will be in Tampa this coming season and begs the question – Why, again, did Tampa pass on Jones at the 2013 draft?

But that book is now closed as the Lightning move on from Drouin and bring in the young defensive prospect that Yzerman has coveted. As well as Tampa Bay has drafted in the Yzerman era with Al Murray at scouting director, drafting and developing a top defensive prospect has been elusive.

Sergachev figures to fit that role.

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Russian blue liner helped lead Windsor to a Memorial Cup championship this season, defeating Erie in the final last month.

The ninth-overall pick made the Canadiens out of training camp, appearing in the first three games with Montreal but was a healthy scratch most of the remainder of October before he was sent back to Windsor at the end of the month.

In 117 games the past two seasons with Windsor, Sergachev has 27 goals and 77 assists to go with 127 penalty minutes and a plus-37 rating. He was also a key contributor to Russia winning a bronze medal at the World Junior Championships with a goal and plus-4 rating.

Sergachev is considered a strong puck-moving, mobile defenseman capable of evolving in to a top-four at the NHL level. At one point leading up to the trade deadline, Sergachev was considered an untouchable prospect by Montreal general manager Marc Bergevin.

So prying Sergachev away from the Canadiens was going to take the right deal.

”We think he has a chance to play in all situations in this league,” Yzerman said of Sergachev. “It’s very difficult to find players of that caliber and in this instance a prospect of that caliber. They’re difficult to acquire.’’

Sergachev almost certainly jumps to the top of Tampa Bay’s prospect list ahead of the likes of other defensemen Dominik Masin, Ben Thomas, Dylan Blujus, Erik Cernak and perhaps even ahead of Jake Dotchin and Slater Koekkoek in terms of prospect status.

At the end of the day, however, he’s still a prospect. Maybe he turns in to the top-four, two-way defenseman the Lightning need to help plug a growing hole at the NHL level with an aging blue line.

But it comes at the cost of moving an extremely talented forward, the type of player with game-breaking ability. Drouin is a unique talent, he will be a top point producer for years to come. That will no longer take place with the Lightning, who used their forward depth to fill a defensive deficiency.

Like all trades, time will be the ultimate judge.

In the present, the Lightning come out on the wrong end in losing such talent.

On a side note: By moving Drouin, it opens up a spot on Tampa Bay’s protection list for the expansion draft which means that Yzerman has the room to protect both Alex Killorn and Vladislav Namestnikov from the Vegas Golden Knights. In return they acquire a top-level prospect who is exempt from the expansion draft.

Highlight package of Sergachev (No. 31) from OHL

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