Drouin is expected to leave the Colorado Avalanche in free agency.

• Player Overview
• What We Know
• Comparables
• Projection

Player Overview

Jonathan Drouin was originally selected third overall by the Colorado Avalanche in 2013, after huge success in the QMJHL as a member of the Halifax Mooseheads. While Drouin did spend parts of three seasons with the Lightning to begin his NHL career, the relationship between the team and player broke down, and Drouin was eventually moved to the Montreal Canadiens in the summer of 2017.

Drouin was able to produce at a steady rate over his first couple seasons with the Canadiens, but never managed to really take the next step. Then across the rest of his tenure in Montreal, the winger had long stretches where he was out of action, playing only 163 games across his final four seasons with the team.

In the summer of 2023, Drouin signed with the Colorado Avalanche, re-joining his former Halifax Moosehead teammate Nathan MacKinnon. Upon joining the Avalanche, Drouin managed to revitalize his career, posting 19 goals and 56 points across 79 games. Returning to Colorado for a second season, Drouin managed 37 points across 43 games, but missed a huge portion of the season with an injury.

Drouin is set to become an unrestricted free agent for the third straight year, but now looks set for a bigger raise. Based on Colorado’s salary cap situation, it looks unlikely that they’ll be able to bring back the winger, and Drouin would be a decent option for a team looking to add some skill to their top-six.

What We Know

• Per ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, Drouin is not expected to re-sign with the Avalanche.

Comparables

Below, we examine what Drouin’s deal could look like, based on previous contracts for other forwards. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate is calculated, visit the About the Site page. With Drouin turning 30 years old, the comparables used will generally be wingers who were near his age at the time of signing, with select centers included as well. Note: ages listed in the tables below are based on a player’s age by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

5 YEARS

Below is a list of comparables, to help project Drouin’s contract. The table uses a system of establishing a cost-per-points basis, using the middle ground between a player’s production over their signing year, and over their career. From there, a comparable player’s cap hit from the first year of their contract is applied to a $95.5M salary cap using the same percentage against the salary cap, and a payment rate can be established based on how much the player was paid compared to their production. Each contract can then project how much Drouin can be expected to make, based on the same cost-per-points basis.

A five-year contract would likely be the longest possible deal we could expect to see for Drouin, with comparables below.

Based on the comps, they’d point to Drouin’s value being anywhere between $6.5M and $10M per year. However, looking at the actual cap hits the comps signed for, they’re all between $5M on the low end and $7M on the high end. As a result, it seems much more likely that the forward would fall within this range, as opposed to the higher range from the projections.

Drouin does align with a lot of the comps in the table production-wise, with some of the likes of Sean Monahan, Ondrej Palat, Andre Burakovsky, and Ryan Strome all acting as decent comps. Palat would represent the highest cap hit of the group, but he was also recently coming off two Stanley Cup wins, and there could’ve been a bit of a premium on his deal as a result.

In terms of the $5M range from Ryan Strome, or the $5.5M range from Sean Monahan and Andre Burakovsky, there’s an argument that Drouin should align more towards the bottom of this range. The winger only has a recent sample size of strong production in Colorado following his time in Montreal where his value declined, and also missed half of the season with an injury. So while Drouin’s production does set him up to hit the $5M range if he signs a five-year deal, it’s a little less likely that he’d come in above that mark.

4 YEARS

A four-year deal would be another realistic scenario for Drouin’s next deal. Other than one outlier in the Kyle Palmieri comp, all other contracts would project Drouin between $4.5M and $7.5M on a four-year deal.

At the same time, the highest cap hit of any comp listed would be $6M from the Taylor Hall and Tyler Toffoli contracts, with all other contracts at $5.5M or less. So while Drouin should still likely be above the $4.5M mark based on the comps, $5.5M likely represents the upper end of what we can expect for the forward.

Based on the table, we do see that a lot of the players with higher production did sign for the higher cap hits (Taylor Hall, Gustav Nyquist, Tyler Toffoli). Especially with Tyler Bertuzzi getting $5.5M per year on a four-year deal last offseason with a much lower signing year production rate, and Evander Kane getting $5.13M per year with similar production, there’s an argument that Drouin could come in a little above the $5M mark on a four-year deal.

3 YEARS

Three years would likely be the shortest contract we’d see for Drouin. The contracts in the table below would project Drouin to be between $5.5M and $7.2M – once again though, we see even the highest contracts signed below at a maximum of $5M per year.

Drouin did have the highest production of any player on the table though, which should still put him in line towards the upper end of this range, around the $5M mark from the Reilly Smith and Evgenii Dadonov contracts.

Projection

A deal between three and five years would be expected for Drouin in free agency, with projections below.