Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

92

Jonathan Drouin

Colorado Avalanche Left Wing

Fifty-six points at 29 after six seasons in Montreal that produced almost nothing — and 48 per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2014-15TBL7042832+334300765.313:14
2015-16TBL214610+140012516.014:27
2016-17TBL73213253-131690618311.517:42
2017-18MTL77133346-28304041647.917:36
2018-19MTL81183553-8263031909.516:56
2019-20MTL277815-6141015113.715:42
2020-21MTL4422123-820000762.616:05
2021-22MTL3461420-923000629.717:06
2022-23MTL5822729-1818000692.914:54
2023-24COL79193756+122850212715.018:11
2024-25 so far
Career56496241337-742132501710239.416:25

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

Seventy-nine games, 19 goals and 37 assists for 56 points with 5 on the power play, 18:11 a night and plus-12. He converted 14.96 per cent of 127 shots against a career 9.38 across 1,023.

He took 55.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,113 minutes, the 89th percentile, and his ice went 53-43 against an expectation of 50.70-40.75. It is the best season of his career by some distance and it came at 29, eleven years after he was taken third overall.

The Finesse Game

The hands are the reason he was taken third overall and they never went anywhere. He handles the puck at speed in tight ice and beats a defenceman on the entry with a change of pace rather than with pure speed.

Two hundred and forty-one career assists in 564 games is a genuine first-line playmaking rate, and 37 last season on Nathan MacKinnon’s wing is what happens when it is finally attached to a finisher.

One hundred and twenty-seven shots at a median of 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20 and 12 per cent from beyond 40. The 14.96 per cent conversion is well above his career rate and will not hold.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 189 and plays no physical game at all. Twenty-eight penalty minutes in 79 games is a low rate and none of it is hostile.

He does not retrieve pucks below the goal line and does not kill penalties. On a club with MacKinnon, Rantanen and Nichushkin, the winger who creates rather than works is a position that exists.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2013, a career that stalled in Tampa Bay and then went badly wrong in Montreal, with a career minus-74 across 564 games behind him. He signed in Colorado on a one-year contract to find out whether any of it was his fault.

The answer was 56 points. That is the most interesting thing that happened to this club last season and it has almost nothing to do with the standings.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,113 minutes

Expected goals
55.4%
89th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.7%
88th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 53 for, 43 against. Expected: 50.7 and 40.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
40th
Numbers
89th

The numbers rank him 49 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1113 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club
COL took 52.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.4% — 3.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,113 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nathan MacKinnon58.7%49.9%56.1%
Mikko Rantanen57.9%52.9%53.3%
Cale Makar56.9%54.0%52.4%

58.7% together, 49.9% for him apart and 56.1% for MacKinnon apart. He was worse away from MacKinnon, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than MacKinnon did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

183 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.