This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kent Johnson
Columbus Blue Jackets Center
24 goals on a 19.5 per cent rate at 22, from a winger who weighs 170 pounds.
| 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 | CBJ | 68 | 24 | 33 | 57 | +2 | 16 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 123 | 19.5 | 17:18 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 198 | 46 | 70 | 116 | -17 | 42 | 9 | 1 | 8 | 316 | 14.6 | 15:10 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
24 goals and 33 assists in 68 games for 57 points, plus-2, on 17:18 a night.
19.5 per cent shooting on 123 shots, which is roughly double a sustainable rate for a winger taking only a quarter of his attempts from inside 20 feet. 47.9 per cent chance share, the 30th percentile, with on-ice goals of 39-49 against an expected 35-38.
The Finesse Game
The most creative player on the roster. The hands are exceptional in small areas, he sees passes nobody else on this club looks for, and 33 assists understates it because his linemates could not always finish.
The shot is decent and 24 goals from it is a fiction of one season. What he does is beat a man one-on-one and make a play — and the distances say he does it from the perimeter, which is where a 170-pound winger is allowed to work.
The Physical Game
6 feet and 170, and among the lightest forwards in the league. He does not win pucks, does not forecheck with any force, and is removed from possession by NHL defencemen as a matter of routine.
16 penalty minutes over 68 games. He is not in the traffic. The frame is the whole question of his career and it is not obvious that it changes.
The Intangibles
A 5th overall pick who took four seasons to establish himself and finally did it in a year the club needed him.
At 22 the skill is not in doubt. The two things that are: a shooting rate that will halve, and a body that has to survive playing inside if he is ever to be more than a power-play specialist.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 877 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.9%
- 30th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.1%
- 54th 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, 49 against. Expected: 34.7 and 37.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 11 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 877 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, 2024-25
- The club
- CBJ took 48.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.9% — 0.4 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 877 minutes at five-on-five — 42nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zach Werenski | 51.6% | 44.7% | 52.3% |
| James van Riemsdyk | 46.9% | 48.6% | 52.0% |
| Ivan Provorov | 46.5% | 48.6% | 48.4% |
51.6% together, 44.7% for him apart and 52.3% for Werenski apart. He was worse away from Werenski, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Werenski did.
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
180 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.