I think he is going to. His upside is very high, but I personally cannot shake Drouin vibes when I watch him. Nothing wrong with Drouin. Solid player, but he did not live up to the hype his IQ and skill created. My own belief is a low motor/compete lead to Drouin underachieving. Unfortunately, I personally think Catton shares those traits and I would imagine I'm not the only one who thinks so. Plus he is south of 6' which many teams may avoid. Many believe size is needed to build a true contender, and the Panthers success can easily be pointed at to support that belief. Could he be Brayden Point? Sure, it is possible. It is also possible he will not be as well
The main reason I believe he is likely to fall is the NHL is a Copycat league. Everyone is trying to build a winner and as Florida looks poised to win it this year that makes them the model to copy. If the Cat's FAs play ball, they could easily run it back next season and potentially win back-2-back cups. Which makes their model that much more appealing to copy.
The reality of using Florida as the basis for roster construction is there is no "Catton" type of player on the Cats roster. Helenius? Yup. It is like I'm already watching him play. Iginla? No doubt. Nygard? 100%. Lindstrom? Decent fit. Sennecke? Also decent. Catton? Nope. Not present. Evan Rodriguez is closest possible comp and their game is not similar nor are their motors. So yeah I would not be surprised to see him fall.
I don't exactly see Drouin, as he was a kind of play that had and still has mental issues to his game. Not even IQ, but mental health stuff. The guy was generally fragile mentally and had problems. That's an uncommon trait from a higher draft pick and it's not exactly predictable. I think considering his Drouin isn't correct.
Also being small isn't as much of a problem these days as getting the bigger guy doesn't always mean the better play. While I'm not saying his skill level is of Bedard, but he's under 6 foot. Kucherov is under 6 foot and the guy is their current franchise player. Same with Kaprizov. Then you have 2023 picks in Michkov, Benson, Yager, Moore, Perreault and Cowan all going in in the first round, all under 6 foot, and project to be pretty damn good players. Shit, we're even getting smaller elite goalies and the era of tall as hell goalies seems to be going away. By the way, Bolts won 2 cups in a row with Point, who is under 6 foot, as their top center.
Also using Florida as the barometer when they technically still haven't won the cup yet, is kind of silly. Flyers as they are now are also not Florida. They will also need a future center to be able to feed to and take passes from Michkov, and I think Catton can be that kind of player. His offensive ceiling is much higher than that of Helenius, Nygard, Lindstrom and Sennecke. However, if Iginla is there, I think you have to really consider taking Iginla over Catton. I think both are going to be good.
Anyways, getting off track, to say that Catton is Drouin I think is silly. From what I can tell, the issues that Drouin was going to have didn't really show up on scouting reports, especially his mental stability. Also, I think scouting is generally getting better with every year, so some of this stuff can be sniffed out better, I think, then in the past 10 years.