This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kent Johnson
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
Fifth overall in 2021, a hundred and seventy pounds, and forty-two games.
| 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 | CBJ | 42 | 6 | 10 | 16 | -2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 62 | 9.7 | 13:33 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 130 | 22 | 37 | 59 | -19 | 26 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 193 | 11.4 | 14:04 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
6 goals and 10 assists in 42 games — 16 points at 13:33 a night, minus-2, with 1 game-winner on 62 shots at 9.68 per cent, and 10 penalty minutes. A shoulder ended the season in January.
46.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 475 minutes, the 29th percentile. His ice went 21-18 against an expectation of 16.81-19.37.
The Finesse Game
62 attempts at a median of 30 feet, with 21 per cent from inside 20 and 15 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 9.68 per cent.
The hands are the best on this roster and the passing is the reason he was taken fifth overall — he will attempt the play through the middle that a coach does not want, and it works often enough to be worth the ones that do not. 37 assists in 130 career games.
He does not shoot from the paint and he does not want to.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 170, and he is the lightest forward on this roster. He cannot win a puck on the wall, he is moved off the front of the net at will, and he avoids contact rather than absorbing it.
10 penalty minutes in 42 games and 26 in 130 for his career is one of the lowest rates in this edition, and it is low because he is never in a battle. The shoulder that ended the season is the second injury of a short career.
The Intangibles
Fifth overall in 2021, out of Michigan, and 130 NHL games and 59 points at 22.
He is one of nine top-ten picks on this roster. A 170-pound forward with genuinely rare hands is the hardest kind of prospect to place, and three seasons in he has not played sixty games in any of them. The tools are not the question; the body is.
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.
- 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.
“**The hands are the best on this roster and the passing is the reason he was taken fifth overall** — he will attempt the play through the middle that a coach does not want, and it works often enough to be worth the ones that do not.”
“He does not shoot from the paint and he does not want to.”
“**He cannot win a puck on the wall, he is moved off the front of the net at will, and he avoids contact rather than absorbing it.**”
“**6-0 and 170, and he is the lightest forward on this roster.**”
“**10 penalty minutes in 42 games and 26 in 130 for his career** is one of the lowest rates in this edition, and it is low because he is never in a battle.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 475 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.5%
- 29th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.6%
- 32nd 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: 21 for, 18 against. Expected: 16.8 and 19.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2023-24 · 42 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 26th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.69 a game
- Distance
- 2.14 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 84.1 mph
- 34th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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
2023-24 · 475 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, 2023-24
- The club
- CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.5% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 475 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cole Sillinger | 44.3% | 48.5% | 43.7% |
| Emil Bemstrom | 46.2% | 46.7% | 45.5% |
| Jake Bean | 49.0% | 45.2% | 44.1% |
44.3% together, 48.5% for him apart and 43.7% for Sillinger apart. He was better away from Sillinger, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Sillinger.
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
85 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 21% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.