The Colorado Avalanche signed defenseman Jack Johnson to a one-year, $750,000 deal Sunday per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Johnson was previously with the team on a professional tryout contract.
Johnson likely stands as a seventh defenseman and/or a waiver candidate later in the year, especially on a team as deep as Colorado. But as the team deals with an injury to Devon Toews early on in the season, Johnson is a candidate to slot into the team’s opening night lineup against the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday.
A veteran of 15 NHL seasons and 950 games, Johnson does bring some veteran experience to a blueline that’s headed by a set of younger names in Cale Makar, Samuel Girard, and Bowen Byram. It’ll be Johnson’s first time playing for a Western Conference team since he was traded away from the Los Angeles Kings midway through the 2011-12 season.
After averaging over 20 minutes a night for the 11 seasons of his career, Johnson’s seen his ice time dwindle progressively down to that of a third-pairing or seventh defenseman in recent years. Johnson appeared in only 13 games with the New York Rangers last season, scoring one goal.
Over his entire NHL career, Johnson’s lit the lamp 71 times and scored 303 points.
He has had amongst the worst raw and relative Corsi and Fenwick ratios of all defensemen since they began tracking those stats. But he also has always been a pretty good point producer too and has logged quite a few first pair minutes as well.
So, was he a good defenseman in spite of corsi/fenwick?
Are corsi/fenwick worthwhile stats for evaluating performance?
Being a good Dman despite his corsi is completely subjective. I don’t know anyone who has accused JJ as being “good” for a very long time.
As for whether corsi is a useful metric, it depends on your own personal opinions (also subjective I suppose). For me, it’s a tool, but certainly not an all encompassing summary of a player. For example, look up Sam Girard. Then look up Seth Jones. What does your gut tell you about who is the better player? What does corsi tell you? Maybe you agree with corsi, maybe you don’t. But either way, I personally don’t put much weight behind that particular metric.
I won’t speak to the Fenwick, since I am even less versed in that stat.
No more sitting, waiting, wishing for that guy.
Mom & Dad’s misdeeds most likely destroyed his promising career.