On Jonathan Drouin and the Tampa Bay Lightning …
- Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: Lightning GM Steve Yzerman hadn’t spoken with Jonathan Drouin since he was reassigned on January 3rd, until he got a phone call from Drouin last week. Drouin wanted to get back playing.
“I guess I always felt it was a possibility,” Yzerman said. “It was, if anything, a pleasant surprise.”
Drouin will practice today and could play are early as Friday for Syracuse.
Yzerman on if Drouin could be a call up later in the season.
“Yes,” Yzerman said. “I will do what’s best for the team and if Jonathan is playing well and is the right fit, I certainly wouldn’t exclude that possibility.”
Drouin could still be traded this season, though he wouldn’t be eligible for the playoffs. A trade could happen this offseason, but Yzerman isn’t going to rule out the possibility of salvaging the relationship.
- Mark Masters: Jonathan Drouin on his decision to rejoin the Syracuse Crunch: “Obviously, I’m a hockey player, I want to play hockey. Sitting at home is not what I wanted to do.”
- Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times: Drouin thinks his relationship with the Lightning can be fixed.
“I think our relationship is fine,” Drouin told reporters in Syracuse after practice, per Lindsay Kramer from the Syracuse Post-Standard. “We’ve talked to make the decision to come back here. I think we’re going to fix this in the summer and see how it goes from there.”
Drouin on not being traded at the deadline.
“Anything can happen, it wasn’t my decision,” Drouin said. “(Yzerman) decided to hold on and that’s the way it went and we’re going to go from there. I couldn’t really control it, so I didn’t want to get too excited, get traded or not. I was pretty neutral about all that stuff.”
Drouin on if he has any regrets on the way things have gone down.
“Obviously I wish it maybe went the other way,” Drouin said, per the Post-Standard. “But it (the holdout) happened that way, and it’s going to be fixed in the summer and we’ll figure it out. But right now I’m just playing for the Crunch. I’m happy to be here.”