Modification of the hard jet substructure in terms of the Soft Drop jet grooming algorithm observables is studied for three different scenarios of jet quenching in a quark-gluon plasma: i) an explicit enhancement of the parton splitting functions, ii) increased soft gluon emissions induced by an in-medium virtuality gain, and iii) energy loss due to a drag force. Despite the fact that first two scenarios both correspond to a radiative energy loss mechanism and lead to similar modifications of parton showers, they are shown to have very different impacts on the momentum balance of hard subjets. Simulations for heavy-ion collisions based on the second scenario are presented and found to be in a good agreement with the experimental data.