The Penguins are taking a look at forming one of the worst value pairings in the NHL and I’m all for it. Jack Johnson and Erik Gudbranson were playing together today and form a 7M duo on a team that spends to the cap every year.

Erik Gudbranson skated with Jack Johnson today. He thinks the pairing will work. He also had some things to say about analytics. Read about it here: https://t.co/oxecOC88S0

— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) September 18, 2019

Why am I for it? Because they can’t hurt the other defensemen on the team. Marcus Pettersson *may* be a pretty good #4 defenseman and is way less likely to drag the worst out of Justin Schultz. Getting Schultz to not play like one of the worst players in the league is something that needs to happen for the team’s success in 2019-20. Playing Schultz with Pettersson gives him a fighting chance. Another obvious consequence of burying Johnson and Gudbranson on the bottom pairing is it keeps the Dumoulin-Letang pairing together. Now you have the potential of a fully functional top four. One of the best consequences of going this route is Evgeni Malkin’s ice time with Jack Johnson should be way down. Everybody is talking about Malkin bouncing back. Well, the the elephant in the room is Johnson sucking the life out of everybody. Stop playing Malkin with crappy puck movers and get logical results.

Gudbranson thinks the pairing will work and dismissed analytics in the piece from Josh Yohe. And? I mean what do you want him to say? He’s made millions doing what he’s doing and he isn’t going to say the pairing is going to do terrible. It’s just another canned answer that ultimately doesn’t mean anything.

One takeaway from the article that I totally disagree with is the following:

Johnson struggled during the first half of last season but saw his play improve during the second half while paired with Schultz.

Johnson did not improve. In fact among defense pairings who played 300 minutes together last year the Johnson-Schultz duo ranked 102nd out of 114 in CF% (44.9%), 104th in CA/60 (65.07), and 95th in xGF% (46.48%). They had the seventh best on-ice save percentage at 95.09(!) Imagine what the narrative would have been surrounding that pairing if the save percentage were even league average. I can’t say it enough, save percentage drives how a lot of people discuss hockey narratives.

In related news the Erik Gudbranson’s pairing with Ben Hutton in Vancouver was even worse than the Johnson-Schultz one from last year. It’s likely Johnson and Gudbranson are very bad together and the team will still be better off for it. Not exactly a shining endorsement for how the team has managed the roster.

Thanks for reading!

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