Nathan MacKinnon knows Jonathan Drouin better than most and believes that Drouin will have success wherever he goes
Tampa Bay Lightning forward Jonathan Drouin is going through a very rough time. He’s an extremely skilled player who feels like his skills aren’t being utilized in Tampa. His former teammate in juniors Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche knows Drouin well and believes that Drouin will be missed if he is traded.
“He’s going to do very well wherever he goes in the right situation,’’ MacKinnon said, via the Tampa Tribune. “ I know he really loves Tampa and wanted to be there for a long time. We’ll see. They’ll definitely miss him for sure.”
Nathan MacKinnon and Drouin were teammates with Halifax. They famously tore up the QMJHL as teammates going into their draft season. They were one of the most dominant teams in recent memory as they dominated most teams. MacKinnon believes that actually might be a part of Drouin’s issues and brings up an excellent point about young players.
“Our junior team, we lost five games all year,” Nathan MacKinnon said. “We had the puck the whole game. We were playing offense for two years, we didn’t really play any [defense]. So that’s tough. I don’t know you can really expect lock-down D when you first come into the league. You can always work on your D but you can’t just become an offensive force.’’
It’s very difficult for young forwards to develop defensively because the extremely good ones typically don’t play too much defense in juniors since they almost always have the puck. Andre Burakovsky of the Capitals is another interesting case study because he played for Erie back when they had both Connor McDavid and Dylan Strome dominating for them. Burakovsky has struggled this season, especially defensively.
Young forwards tend to develop slowly defensively, which is why they must be started off with tons of offensive zone starts and gradually be given more as they develop and why teams must be patient with them to let them learn.