Most people who read this blog regularly know that I dislike Jack Johnson. Some people might even say I have a vendetta against him. Maybe it's because I regularly call him a "dick" and an "asshole" and once wished cancer upon him. But I started thinking, maybe it's not his on-ice play that makes me hate him, maybe I just don't like him because he has a stupid face and guys like him regularly pantsed me in high school ("Pantsy" is what they called me), and maybe he's actually good. So I decided to be more like fellow blogger Quisp and looked up some stats. Well, first I decided to be like Quisp so I fucked my dog, then I looked up some stats. (Quisp: really nice guy jug of juice, but an animal fucker. Felt like you should know.)
Johnson is on the ice for 23:15 minutes a game, the 2nd most of any Kings player. He is a negative when he's on the ice. He's specifically -17, but plus/minus kind of sucks so let's take a look at the raw numbers. Johnson has been on the ice for 49 goals against; no other player is within 15 goals of him. Johnson has played 23% of the time with Randy Jones and Sean O'Donnell and around 10% of the time with Rob Scuderi and Drew Doughty. Different defensive partners, different offensive lines, it doesn't matter; Jack Johnson is the constant that leads to goals in the back of the Kings net. Don't believe me? Well buckle the fuck up, I got more stats!
I told Earl to make me a chart of Johnson's defensive incompetence before I took his lunch money and he did it. (Actually, I asked nicely and he said, "Sure!" and whipped it up. We're a real team!) This is what he wrote:
How's this? I ran four tables on Vic Ferarri's timeonice that showed how JMFJ was fucking up results for four different Kings centermen. Here's the script I ran:
http://timeonice.com/playershots0910.php?team=L.A& first=20001&last=21230&daniel= 3&henrik=11
That would produce a table of individual Kings results plus a "combined player 99" result, which is in this case, player #3 (JMFJ) and player #11 (Kopitar). I changed the last two digits and also ran it for 28, 26, and 15.
And here's how I summarized the results:
GF GA GD SF SA ShotRatio ASF ASA CorsiRatio Kopitar w/o JMFJ +20 -13 +7 251 183 0.578 464 373 0.554 Kopitar with JMFJ +9 -18 -9 143 157 0.477 282 279 0.503 Stoll w/o JMFJ +11 -5 +6 141 114 0.553 249 219 0.532 Stoll with JMFJ +11 -9 +2 101 88 0.534 165 153 0.519 Handzus w/o JMFJ +17 -10 +7 161 178 0.475 283 354 0.444 Handzus with JMFJ +7 -15 -8 88 105 0.456 169 207 0.449 Richardson w/o JMFJ +12 -9 +3 136 122 0.527 258 254 0.504 Richardson with JMFJ +6 -10 -4 75 103 0.421 129 177 0.422
Don't know if that's fully legible, but every centerman does better outscoring when playing away from JMFJ -- they are a combined +23 without him (no empty-netters, even strength only), and a combined -19 with him. Their shot ratios are all improved away from him, and except for Handzus, their shot attempts are all improved away from JMFJ.
Thanks, Earl! Two things are clear when you look at this: one, I don't know how to indent shit, and two, every centermen for the Kings does better when Jack Johnson is not around and does worse when he's on the ice. Every single one of them. "Well," you are probably thinking because you're an astute fellow or lady, "That must mean Jack Johnson is playing against the toughest competition." Nope!
| Qual. of Comp. | |
| Rob Scuderi | 0.019 |
| Drew Doughty | 0.014 |
| Sean O'Donnell | -0.028 |
| Randy Jones | -0.040 |
| Jack Johnson | -0.052 |
| Matt Greene | -0.068 |
| Davis Drewiske | -0.082 |
Since about when Ryan Smyth went out, Scuderi-Doughty has been the top shutdown line. Johnson has generally been playing with Kopitar's line along with either Randy Jones or Sean O'Donnell.
To recap, Jack Johnson is a negative player. He has been a negative player with different defensive partners, he has been a negative player with different offensive combinations, he has been a negative player despite not playing tough defensive minutes. Either Jack Johnson has been screwed over by his defensive partners in a scheme not seen since The Da Vinci Code or he's not a very good defenseman. I'm inclined to believe that he's not a very good defenseman. Right now. I mean, he's only 22. But still, not a very good defenseman.
Why?
Well, imaginary question I asked myself to segue into this, I think it's because he's dumb. And I don't mean in a "Haha, what a dumbshit" kind of way, I mean in a "Christ that kid's stupid at the game of hockey" kind of way. You can see how dumb Johnson is if you compare a mistake he made to the play of Drew Doughty, who is basically the Abel to Johnson's Cain. Both players faced the same situation in the last game: there was a partial 2-on-1 bearing down on them with a Kings player racing hard to catch up. In both situations, the Kings player (O'Donnell in Johnson's case, Handzus in Doughty's) took the player in the middle of the ice without the puck while relying on the defender to take the man with the puck. They do this because you'd rather force the opposition to make a great pass through two players than give him a free shot. When Handzus took the man in the middle, Doughty immediately closed on the player on the outside with the puck and erased him against the boards, thus nullifying the break; when O'Donnell took the man in the middle, Johnson stayed in the middle until he saw the player with the puck (Miroslav Satan) wind up for a shot. The result was that he partially screened Jonathan Quick and Satan scored a goal. Two very similar plays, two very different defensemen, two very different results.
Johnson is just not very smart. He has all the physical gifts in the world: a booming shot, nice hands, great speed, but he uses them incorrectly. You can be the fastest guy in the world but it means nothing if you're going in the wrong direction. You can see his little mistakes all over the ice, too; you'll notice him pinching in too low on the power play and thus making it more likely that his point shot will get blocked, you'll see him fail to read that a forward is going to reverse his direction along the boards and so he'll give the forward a free lane to the net, you'll see him stand in front of the net and fail to read the forward sliding behind him and so the forward will get a pass right in front of the slot. You'll see all of this and, if you're me, you'll sigh.
You'll sigh because there's not much the Kings can do about it. Drew Doughty, Randy Jones and Jack Johnson are the only Kings defenders that have any sort of impact offensively for the Kings. Doughty is already playing the most minutes of any King and Randy Jones is worse defensively than Johnson so it's not like he can take Johnson's minutes. The Kings are a good defensive team and if Johnson were better than the Kings would be a great defensive team. If I had to make a list of players who need to be better if the Kings are going to make the playoffs Johnson would be #2, right behind Jonathan Quick. C'mon, Jack, play better. Play better and I promise not to call you a douche bag for the entire summer.
Prediction: Kings win, 4-3. I am so fascinated by the Marleau-Thornton-Heatley v. Frolov-Handzus-Brown match-up that I don't even notice all the times Jack Johnson fucks up.
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