SAINT PAUL, Minn. — One of the most eye-catching stats on the NHL’s official scoresheet after the Canadiens beat the Blues 5-2 on Saturday afternoon in St. Louis was Jonathan Drouin’s ice time.

Drouin, who is off to a very good start this season, was listed with the least ice time on the Canadiens with only 12:45. Drouin scored a power-play goal in the game and had been held off the scoresheet only once in the first eight games this season, posting 3-5-8 totals.

When asked about Drouin’s ice time before Sunday afternoon’s game against the Wild in Minnesota, coach Claude Julien basically said don’t believe the NHL’s numbers.

“Guys, I’m going to tell you right now: we saw that … we watched it ourselves,” Julien said. “They’re totally off on their ice time. To clarify everything, he had as much ice time as anybody else did yesterday. They must have got confused between 90 (Tomas Tatar) and 92 (Drouin), but we didn’t like that, either, and we kind of went through all his shifts and everything else and they were off by at least a minute and a half.”

Tatar was credited with 16:40 of ice time, second among Canadiens forwards to Phillip Danault, who logged 17:08. Fourth-line centre Nate Thompson was listed with the second-least amount of ice time at 13:15. Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Drouin’s linemate, had 14:30 of ice time.

When Drouin was asked about his limited ice time — at least according to the NHL — after Saturday’s game, he said: “It’s a little frustrating, but it is what it is.”

When asked Sunday if he had told Drouin his official ice-time numbers were wrong, Julien said: “No, because he hasn’t asked us about it. Maybe one of my assistant coaches said it to him.

“Those are things that, unfortunately, we all get to read the stats after games and you put a lot of emphasis on that and then you find out that they’re not always accurate,” the coach added. “Same thing, we’re always fighting with faceoffs and our faceoffs (statistics) that we take ourselves and the league’s are never the same.”

Heading into Sunday’s game, the Canadiens were ranked 23rd in the NHL in faceoffs at 48.3 per cent.

“So you got to kind of take the stats with a little grain of salt and kind of make sure you’re doing the right thing,” Julien said. “There’s no way … I think after a period (Drouin) had about 2:45. It didn’t make any sense.

“Anyways, hopefully that resolves a mystery.”

scowan@postmedia.com

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