Kent Johnson Improved, Even If It Didn't Feel Like It
The hockey media at-large, including many fans, believe Kent Johnson suffered through the dreaded “Sophomore Slump.” While it certainly felt like Kent Johnson underperformed prior to his injury, I’d like to contend that this slump was more perceived than it was real.
Kent Johnson’s sophomore campaign was a far cry from Cole Sillinger’s and those two seasons shouldn’t really be held in comparison.
In watching Kent Johnson, and in listening to post-game interviews from the head coach, you definitely got slump vibes. Especially early in the season, Johnson was mishandling the puck and struggling to move across the ice. He’s always been a funky, inside-edge driven skater but this year his balance on skates seemed off.
In 2022-2023, he was an exciting young rookie brimming with talent. In 2023-2024, he was struggling and there was reason for concern.
The simple fact of the matter is that our perception of his success as an offensive winger/center in 2022-2023 perhaps had more to do with fresh optimism and powerplay production.
In 2022-2023, Kent Johnson had 40 points in 79 games. In 23-24, Kent Johnson had 16 points in 42 games, which would pace for 30 across the same 79.
The difference being that at 5v5, Kent Johnson had 23 points in 79 games in 22-23 whereas he had 15 points in 42 games in 23-24, which would pro-rate to 28 across 79 games.
The Underlying Metrics
After his return to the NHL, Kent Johnson won some of his minutes. That might feel like only small praise, but compare his 5v5 xG/60 and shift start deployment with 2022-23.
Kent Johnson, under Brad Larsen, received significantly Offensive Zone Start favored deployment and spent nearly the entire season below water in terms of 5v5 xG share.
To put this in hard number context, in his 34 games and 385 5v5 minutes from Dec 1st 2023-February 28th 2024 (after his call-up from the AHL, ending with his injury), Kent Johnson posted, after adjusting for score and venue, a 49.73 CF% (7th on the team behind Severson, Voronkov, Marchenko, Jenner, Chinakhov, Werenski), 56.58 GF% (8th) and 52.25 xGF% (3rd on the team behind Jenner, Gaudreau).
Rate Production and Deployment
All-in-all, Kent Johnson’s points/60 at 5v5 ended this season at 1.95 points/60, good for 140th in the league (notable names around this area include: Clayton Keller, Matthew Tkachuk, Jack Hughes, Mathew Barzal, Evgeni Malkin, Timo Meier, Martin Necas and Brock Boeser). Assuming there are 96 first line forwards, and 96 second line forwards, that puts him firmly within a 2nd line quality producer of points at 5v5.
In 2022-2023, he produced 1.43 points/60 at 5v5, good for the 335th best forward.
Before we get too carried away by KJ being a producer on the level of the players listed above, deployment matters.
Kent Johnson isn’t necessarily soaking the top matchups and finding ways to produce at the same level as a Keller or Jack Hughes (they don’t necessarily get their offense against fellow elites either, but that’s a post for another time). At the same time, he’s also not playing with the top players.
In 2022-2023, we can see that he played distributed around the lineup and generally against bottom six competition. Worth noting that, in nearly all circumstances the equivalent defensemen on his team were much worse considering the injuries to Werenski, Bean and eventual departure of Vladislav Gavrikov.
His deployment wasn’t extreme, though in looking at his season review from HockeyViz, he did certainly get favored offensive zone deployments. Still, that sort of deployment is more common than you think among top level players.
Largely, Quality of Teammate effects are generally larger than Quality of Competition effects. When a player is within a given game, they play 100% of their time on ice with their teammates. Within the same game, their competition is closer to normalized.
In 2023-2024, Kent Johnson didn’t necessarily play against harder competition but he did certainly play with worse forwards. His ice time was stratified away from the Blue Jackets’ top-six as Pascal Vincent preferred keeping Johnny Gaudreau with Boone Jenner and later had the Russian line as a solid block as well.
Now, Kent Johnson certainly did play with better defensemen, especially considering Zach Werenski, Ivan Provorov and Damon Severson were added to the roster, and did receive slightly more time away from the #1 defenseman on opposing teams.
Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus
It’s hard to cut through all of this abstraction, to weigh the new matchups, linemates and zone starts against the old. To do that, we’ll turn to EvolvingHockey’s RAPM model which seeks to strip performance from all of these factors. Full explainer here.
In 2022-2023, Kent Johnson was a minorly positive driver of goal differential at 5v5 and minorly positive in all aspects of the powerplay. He was quite bad in terms of generating shots and shot quality.
In 2023-2024, Kent Johnson was minorly positive at generating goal differential, minorly positive at suppressing shot quality and quantity against. He was minorly poor at generating shot quality and quantity. He was terrible at generating goals on the powerplay but improved at shot quantity and shot quality.
Kent Johnson improved in every facet at 5v5, and even some on the powerplay, but he performed noticeably worse at generating goals on the powerplay. More on the powerplay later.
Improvements on Tape
I’ll look more at the powerplay work later, and additionally a deeper dive through more tape in a later article, but there’s plenty of evidence for Kent Johnson renovating his game and adding some dimensions as a play driver.
He’s not a “loud” defensive presence and he’ll never be elite at 1v1 full takeaways without improvements to his ability to play through contact but there’s a lot of tape that certainly corroborate Kent Johnson’s defensive improvements.
Take this shift for example. After Bemstrom takes a shot that quickly turns into a zone exit, Kent Johnson uses his body to seal the puck away from the San Jose shark attacker. From there, he positions his stick well and comes away with possession.
He enters the zone, delays, and moves the puck to Erik Gudbranson who just puts it on net. From there, Kent Johnson attacks downhill through the middle and this net driven motion allows him first priority to the loose puck.
He moves up the wall and tries to rim the puck down low after an awkward not-exchange with Jake Bean and relinquishes possession.
In this clip, we can see how Kent Johnson drives play and improves possession via dangerous cross-lane passing in the neutral zone.
In the beginning, Kent Johnson starts the breakout from the wing, passing across ice through two defensemen to Damon Severson who now has plenty of open-ice. As much as defense is often about generating takeaways and suppressing shots, moving the puck out of the zone and into safe hands is just as much a factor in defensive improvements.
Unfortunately, Damon Severson turns over the puck on entry but Kent Johnson is prepared and aware. He was already moving to the middle to attack a soft space in the ice but this movement put him on top of Tage Thompson and in perfect position to take back possession from the Buffalo Sabres.
Now, the Blue Jackets are in a neutral zone re-entry situations and we can see Emil Bemstrom softly moving through the middle without awareness and both Damon Severson and Cole Sillinger attack the same ice.
The good thing, for the rest of the players on the ice, is that Kent Johnson has a plan and it’s manipulating the Sabres’ defense with a fake slap dump and delivering the puck cross-ice, once again, to Ivan Provorov.
Provorov moves around the net, Kent Johnson positions himself in a high-danger shooting area and is unmarked but Provorov instead stuffs the puck on net. Perhaps he anticipated Johnson attacking the net but in any case no connection.
KJ gets the first touch on the loose puck, with a rather unsophisticated slap, and possession is once again in the Blue Jackets’ favor. Provorov settles for a point-shot with a screen instead of moving to an open Kent Johnson and Jake Christiansen fires an ill-advised shot on net before Buffalo recovers possession.
In each of these cases, there was little Johnson could do to upgrade the actual offense but his actions certainly made offense more likely and therefore improved shots against as well.
From here, we can see that KJ is diversifying is offensive toolkit. He’s not just a rush creator, though his shiftiness and handling through the neutral zone are still very much assets. Now, Kent Johnson is using his scanning habits along with expert reading of body language to anticipate the direction of play.
After Toronto recovers the puck, Jonson anticipates the D to D pass and quick intercepts the puck. He’s skilled, so he picks the puck off the wall cleanly. Then, he moves behind the net to buy time for his off-wall behind the net pass to Johnny Gaudreau.
Kent Johnson is one of the few players who can make blind passes from the boards more than just possession waste. His ability to access this type of high danger pass, along with the cross-ice passing in the neutral zone, are strong drivers of his positive goal differential.
There’s a lot more to say about Kent Johnson and this season, but I’ll save that for a deeper film breakdown as I chart a course and look at some skill-level comparables likely sometime during the offseason.
So why, then, did his season feel so bad? His weaknesses were put in stark relief and he was taken away from the mobile, creative east-west game that made him most successful. His coach fundamentally mistrusted his game and gave him few chances to break through prior to his injury, in the aforementioned interview Vincent even lamented Kent Johnson’s inability to block a point shot.
It’s difficult to imagine the Kent Johnson from 2022-23, most skilled and confident puck handler on the team bobbling a puck and missing wide in a panic.
Of Kent Johnsons’ mistakes, many were incredibly easy to notice. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my time cutting tape and reviewing games, it’s that the loud mistakes are the most lasting.
This common circumstance is know as the Loss Aversion Heuristic. In some ways, we remember the good of Kent Johnson. The clever weight shifts and handling feints that allow him to enter the zone with time and space but it’s the failed handles, the bobbles, the falling over inexplicably while skating that stand in our memories.
Pascal Vincent is no different in many ways. Without going to deep here, he’s a coach that seems to be driven by loss aversion while passing it off as “high standards”.
In any case, Kent Johnson has largely taken this season in stride. Through the bobbles and retooling his game to fit the needs of a different season, he has improved.
Perhaps next season, he can get back to what made him special. I was reminded of the off-ice habits that made him such a tantalizing player and draft pick when I was reading a quote from Nikita Kucherov about his MVP season this year..
“You look at all the best players in different sports, they consistently work on their skills, and same here. Be better than you were yesterday. That’s the mentality that should be for everybody else but it’s not. Everyone is spending more time in the gym than on the ice. My mentality is to be on the ice more than anyone.”
Reviewing the Offseason Development Trajectory
As part of last offseason’s writing, I looked at EvolvingHockey’s RAPM model to determine an expected development course. Kent Johnson’s 40 points in his Draft+2 year put him in a very solid cohort of young players many of whom are now stars on top teams in the NHL.
The premise, was to determine whether it was wise to sign Kent Johnson to a long-term contract after his first full NHL season so as to extract value against the cap from a core player.
The common sentiment at the time was a $7million x 7 year deal. I’m sure pretty much every fan who watched this season would have a hard time being enthusiastic about that same deal if it were signed today.
Going into this offseason, the Blue Jackets still have a similar problem ahead of them. Is Kent Johnson’s place among that “star winger” cohort viable and if-so, is now the time for an extension?
In order to evaluate the first question, we’ll have to take a look at what happened during this past season and why so much shine may have worn off of Kent Johnson.
First, we’ll look at the development flags I established for Kent Johnson as they compare to a select group of cohort wingers.
RAPM Corsi Differential ascending to NHL average
Established Chemistry with a Talented Forward
A spot on PP1
Corsi Differential
I went ahead and added the data from Kent Johnson’s D+3 to his progression from his cohort average chart. Kent Johnson is still the worst possession differential creator among the cohort. He’s working from behind and didn’t take the leap that Rantanen did.
In terms of generating a goal-differential, Kent Johnson still grades out as among the best of this cohort. While he isn’t necessarily driving possession he is putting his team ahead on the scoresheet.
This one is a bit harder to rectify. Only Nikita Kucherov, Robert Thomas and Matt Boldy were better at winning their minutes. Kent Johnson projects to be a special offense finisher but he hasn’t quite come close to the impact of either of those three. His passing and creative shot placement should continue to allow him to remain on top of the pack but the point totals won’t follow unless he improves the rest.
Established Chemistry
As we saw from the data of Boldy and Rantanen, playmaking wingers need a partner who can create. If 2022-2023 is anything to go by, Cole Sillinger wasn’t exactly it. Adding Adam Fantilli, or examining a pairing of Kent Johnson and Patrik Laine, could yield the results necessary for improved performance.
Kent Johnson’s most common linemate was once again Cole Sillinger. He was tried, in brief windows, with Adam Fantilli and Dmitri Voronkov. In both of those cases he performed much better than his large volume of minutes with Sillinger. Part of that is Johnson’s significant underperformance in early minutes with Sillinger prior to his AHL demotion.
Cole Sillinger is fighting his way to a resurgent season but these two players perhaps proved they aren’t necessarily good complements for eachother. Lately, Sillinger has found his energy and impact when placed in a more direct line, and in a matchup role, featuring Alexandre Texier and Kirill Marchenko.
Perhaps their anti-synergy has more to do with not meshing with Emil Bemstrom and Justin Danforth, who had the worst impact on Kent Johnson’s on-ice metrics, than it does anything Johnson/Sillinger are doing specifically. In limited minutes with Alex Nylander, the line looked a bit better.
Kent Johnson looked the best on a line with Dmitri Voronkov and Kirill Marchenko when he was given more free reign of the middle of the ice. Additionally, Voronkov was an especially good partner for Kent Johnson as both possessed an instant chemistry and were able to link give-and-go moves through the neutral zone.
Regardless, Kent Johnson did not form chemistry with another young-star, like Rantanen with MacKinnon, Boldy with Fiala or Bratt with Hughes, and as such remains firmly un-broken out.
Spot on PP1
There’s room for some more creative deployment, especially at net-front, where Kent Johnson can unleash his full bag of tricks in tight-spaces, but currently Boone Jenner occupies that slot and his FO% is important to getting powerplays off on the right foot.
Kent Johnson’s 2023-24 powerplay performance never really had a chance. He did find a spot on PP1 at times. He showed the capacity to access the bumper position with creative playmaking from the right half-wall and was even, for a frustrating brief-window before his injury, given a potential net-front creator spot.
On this shift, you can see the variety of creation methods that Johnson can employ from the off-wing half-wall. This slap pass, to the bumper position, has been a technique perfected by Nikita Kucherov and weaponized by Brayden Point.
From there, assuming that he has now established the fear of the bumper, he shows his ability to chess-game the penalty kill and move in for a walk-in shot. His shooting power is undermined by his instability on his edges but the framework for a creator is there.
In this shift, we can see his ability to dodge pressure and, again, create in a variety of ways from the same position. He’s creative and manipulative and is one of the few players that broke the Vancouver PK structure. It wasn’t just the creativity but the consistency and safety under pressure across multiple puck touches.
Kent Johnson didn’t establish himself as a PP1 threat, at least not in the way some of the more advanced powerplay creators in that cohort did in their D+3, but he did flash his potential to become a threat.
Worth noting that the best players in the cohort, Sam Reinhart, Nikita Kucherov, Mikko Rantanen, Tim Stutzle, William Nylander, played with better players on better units.
The powerplay woes in Columbus are multifacted but perhaps a better system, one that encourages more puck touches and risk taking at 5v5, would help Columbus pull themselves out of the dregs of powerplay performance.
Building Year
While Kent Johnson didn’t take the step forward that would indicate he’s primed to become a 90+ point scorer like Nylander, Stutzle, Kucherov and Rantanen, but he hasn’t ruled himself out entirely either. He’s working at a physical tools deficit but his underlying numbers still paint room for optimism.
While I will dig into some of the “whys” and “hows” later this offseason, I think it’s safe to say that some strength improvments would go a long way even simply improving his outside-edge utilization would help unlock his ability to use his brain and hands to avoid strength-based battles in the first place.
Similarly, while he was never really a cerebral player prior to the NHL, there’s some evidence that his defensive and forechecking game are moving in that direction. A good offseason with strong ice-work, provided his shoulder surgery and rehab go well, should serve as a strong platform for future growth.
Until then, the Blue Jackets should prioritize surrounding him with players who can insulate him and help him play his instinctual game. Perhaps a savvy rush veteran like Matt Duchene, or even simply pairing him with Boone Jenner and letting him run the offense with a pacey right winger (Matt Duchene still works here).