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What if Jack Johnson wasn't brought in to be a bottom pairing player? |
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We are one day away from the official start to free agency. You know when the NHL sticks its middle finger at Canada and continues to have this on Canada Day. It means tomorrow the Jack Johnson deal can be made official. I think most people know that he isn’t a very good player that will eat up cap space and ice time. How much ice time is now the question.
It isn’t often you see contracts valued at over 3M per season over five years for a bottom pairing defenseman. The widely held assumption is that Johnson would be sheltered on a bottom pairing. What if that assumption is wrong? What if the team actually believes Johnson is a top four defenseman? That rumored contract looks a lot more like something you would give a #4 guy than a #6/7/8 which he is.
There have been many rumblings that “Rutherford isn’t done”, “Rutherford has something up his sleeve”. When you look down the Penguins lineup and prospect pool there aren’t too many options that stick out that the team could part with and get value out of. Olli Maatta is one of those options. What if the trick up Rutherford’s sleeve is to deal Maatta and have Johnson replace him? I’ve never been against the idea of moving Maatta because I think his market value has been higher than actual value for some time, but the point of moving Maatta would be to make the team better. Not give Jack Johnson huge minutes.
We’ve been conditioned to take Jim Rutherford at his word due to his honesty and candor. He said he’s not done. Any meaningful trade takes assets out the door. The bigger the splash the higher end the assets need to be. The Penguins don’t have too many options they are probably willing to move that fit that description. Phil Kessel? Derick Brassard? Daniel Sprong? Olli Maatta? Tristan Jarry as a popular third piece throw-in?
Remember, there is still one team crazy enough to outbid the Penguins and they were at it this morning. Remember, the Canadiens are all about getting a center. They just made a deal with a team to close the door on one of the players they were targeting, Paul Stastny.
It didn’t make sense for the Penguins to tie up 9.75M in Matt Murray and Marc-Andre Fleury. The Canadiens now have 14.6M(!) tied up in goaltending. When you want to weaponize your cap space you’d like to think you could do better than a bottom six forward and two extremely low probability draft picks. Even if you can flip Steve Mason he’s not going to have great value on the market. It’s a lot of moving pieces to gain what exactly? This is the kind of team that you hope can save the Penguins from themselves.
Do the right thing, Marc.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
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