This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kent Johnson
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
Sixteen goals at 20, off a top speed in the 17th percentile.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 9 | 0 | 3 | 3 | +2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 12:27 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 79 | 16 | 24 | 40 | -19 | 14 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 126 | 12.7 | 14:31 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 88 | 16 | 27 | 43 | -17 | 16 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 131 | 12.2 | 14:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
16 goals and 24 assists in 79 games, minus-19, 14:31 a night — a full rookie season at 20.
40 points is a genuinely good number for a first-year forward on a club that scored 214, and the shooting percentage of 12.7 is high but not absurd.
41.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 7th percentile — the worst share of any Columbus forward who played a full season. His ice went 39-48 against an expectation of 33.33-46.90: six goals better than the chances at the offensive end and about as expected against.
His line outscored what it created and still lost the minutes badly.
The Finesse Game
126 shots at a median of 27 feet, 36 per cent from inside twenty and 15 per cent from beyond forty.
Inside forty: 105 shots, seventeen goals, 16.19 per cent. Beyond forty: 15 shots, none.
The hands are the whole asset and the record supports it — 16 goals and 24 assists says a player who can both finish and pass at 20, which is not common. The shot itself measures 86.2 mph, the 17th percentile, and that is a real limitation for a forward who is not going to be a net-front player.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 170 pounds, and the tracking is the concern in this report: 21.6 mph at the 17th percentile, 0.5 bursts over twenty a game at the 24th, 2.27 miles a game at the 29th.
He is slow by measurement, light by weight and 20 years old. Two of those three change with time and the first one mostly does not. The 7th-percentile possession share is what it looks like against men.
14 penalty minutes in 79 games. He avoids contact entirely, and at 170 pounds that is a reasonable policy rather than a character question.
The Intangibles
Fifth overall in 2021, out of Michigan, and a full NHL season at 20 with 40 points.
The skill is not in doubt and the frame is: he is a 170-pound forward measuring in the bottom fifth of the league for speed, on a club that has no line to shelter him behind. Everything about the projection depends on the body, and this book has no way to see it coming.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live
3 of his 16 goals late or in overtime, 92nd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it
- durable· was available
79 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“16 goals and 24 assists says a player who can both finish and pass at 20, which is not common”
“He avoids contact entirely, and at 170 pounds that is a reasonable policy rather than a character question.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 985 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.5%
- 7th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.4%
- 13th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 48 against. Expected: 33.3 and 46.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 0 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 79 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 27th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.47 a game
- Distance
- 2.27 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.2 mph
- 43rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.9
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 985 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.5% — 2.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 985 minutes at five-on-five — 57th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jack Roslovic | 42.1% | 41.2% | 40.9% |
| Andrew Peeke | 40.7% | 41.9% | 44.5% |
| Erik Gudbranson | 35.7% | 44.0% | 42.0% |
42.1% together, 41.2% for him apart and 40.9% for Roslovic apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
160 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.