Not only do you add Sergachev to our lineup but you also remove him from TB's lineup. He was their 3rd best dman and was not paid much back then which helped them a lot. When they traded Drouin they had to get someone who did not need protection so they had to trade him for a kid. It's not certain that if traded to another team the kid returning would have developed like Sergachev did.
An important thing people forget in that trade is we traded a protection slot. We were one of the few team with too many protection slots. We even protected Jordie Benn because we did not have enough good players to protect even after acquiring Drouin which was a complete joke. We were in a position of strength in that trade by a mile. We basically wasted a great opportunity to fleece a GM. We should have target Shea Theodore hard instead of Drouin.
The idea was to get a forward and more specifically a C. Drouin had tremendous potential at the time.
Sergachev has been a Top PP, 3rd pair guy for years. He really had trouble against any decent toughness of opposition. Brisebois 2.0. But the difference with TB vs. Habs development, TB rightfully brought him along very very slowly. So last year his play popped. For the first time he was able to drive play against decently tough opposition.
It took him 6,5 years though, in an incredible team know for development.
Before that he was Brisebois 2.0.
I’m convinced he would have never achieved his last pop had he been in a habs jersey; Habs have screwed up many and developed few.
Had Drouin been somewhere else, he would have been much better. He wouldn’t have lost a year trying to learn C, etc.
