Lightning's Jonathan Drouin Has Proven He Was Right to Demand Trade

Jonathan Drouin has been outstanding during the Stanley Cup playoffs. In 12 games, he has three goals, eight assists and points in six of his past seven games. Taking on the minutes and competition usually reserved for the injured Steven Stamkos, the 21-year-old Drouin has played to a respectable stalemate in terms of on-ice shot attempts.

Four months ago, Drouin let the public know that he wanted a trade, as he felt he wasn't being given a fair opportunity by the Tampa Bay Lightning. On Jan. 20, he refused to report to his minor-league team in Syracuse and was suspended without pay.

Drouin felt he was an NHL player and did not belong in the AHL. The Lightning felt otherwise.

Through two-plus rounds of the postseason, it's time to accept that the allegedly entitled, disrespectful and foolish Drouin was correct—he belongs in the NHL.

Let's get this out of the way now—17 games in the AHL did not change Drouin. He didn't have a moment of clarity that magically transformed him from inferior hockey player to top-six forward on a Stanley Cup contender. He didn't score 11 goals for Syracuse and suddenly have an epiphany to play "the right way" in the NHL.

While he was sitting on his ass for six weeks playing no hockey at all, a movie montage didn't take place that featured Drouin watching children play a pickup game that resulted in his renewed love and dedication to his team.

Drouin was always this good; Jon Cooper and Steve Yzerman either couldn't see it, chose not to see it or felt they already had enough great players in the lineup and didn't want to tinker with a team that reached the Cup last year.

The flip side of this is true as well; there wasn't an old scout in the stands at Syracuse chomping an unlit cigar that fell out his mouth as Drouin dangled through subpar competition. The scout didn't sprint to a pay phone, dial Yzerman and demand that he call up Drouin in this fictional story that takes place in 1982 for some reason.

Sometimes, despite your best intentions to screw up something great, things work out.

See: National Hockey League, 2016 All-Star Game, John Scott.

On March 8, Drouin reported to Syracuse and was reinstated. On April 2, he scored his ninth goal in nine games and was in no way, shape or form on his way to Tampa for the postseason. But on April 4, the Lightning announced that Stamkos would miss up to three months because of surgery required to repair blood clots.

Three days later, guess who was recalled by the Lightning?

Look, we all get it. Nobody likes it when young people take control of their lives. Millennials! Yuck! Who do you think you are asserting yourself? Pay your dues like me, the person who is bitter and never had the talent you possess! Know your place, young person!

The thing is, Drouin did know his place. It was in the NHL.

Let's be clear, though—if you are 21 years old and strutting around your office with a month-old liberal arts degree trying to tell everyone in your marketing department that you have a Snapchat story idea that will connect with casuals through an influencer you know on Instagram and nobody likes that idea, you are not Jonathan Drouin. Shut up. Maybe get your boss coffee for a couple years and learn the craft. That's an OK path, too.

If you are one of the best hockey players on Earth and you can't earn a regular spot on your team because of someone like Ryan Callahan, yeah, maybe ask to work somewhere else.

There were plenty of signs the past two years that showed Drouin was ready for regular, meaningful minutes on an NHL team. A look at his 5-on-5 minutes over the past two years shows he wasn't getting that, at least not consistently.

Drouin's most common linemate over that time was Cedric Paquette, a very fine checking center who did a great job against Jonathan Toews during last year's Cup Final. After that, it was Stamkos. Then it was fourth-line center Brian Boyle, so it's not as though the ultra-talented Drouin was on the ice regularly with players of his caliber, at least offensively.

Playing with Valtteri Filppula and Ondrej Palat in the playoffs, suddenly Drouin is the elite player everyone thought he was at the time he was drafted.

Odd how that works out.

Drouin isn't the only case of a conference finalist general manager stumbling into some good luck—while Yzerman would have liked to trade Drouin at this year's deadline, Sharks general manager Doug Wilson tried to trade Joe Thornton during the 2014 offseason only to have that not work out.

Yzerman, unlike Wilson, definitely exercised more patience and was rewarded for it when Stamkos left the lineup, but he and Cooper still misjudged Drouin's readiness for the NHL and his production at this time of year while replacing the face of the franchise speaks to that.

We all make mistakes. We should all be so fortunate to have them work out as well as Tampa's mistake with Drouin.