Why Has Jack Johnson Not Been Benched?

The Penguins have lost 9 of their last 10 games and everyone is grasping at anything to figure out why. I’ve heard fire Sullivan he’s lost the team, trade this player or trade that player.

I’ve heard just about everything but that Jack Johnson is a problem. A head scratch-er for sure. All I can figure is that journalists won’t touch him because he is a close friend of Sidney Crosby. Maybe that’s also the reason Sullivan won’t bench him. Is Jack Johnson untouchable? Night after night I watch Johnson turning over the puck, forcing bad plays and completely out of position and I hear crickets.

The team is losing and simple deduction tells you to look at what has changed with the team to figure out what is wrong.  Here is a simple list of notable changes:  Number one, the team has lost it’s team speed.  Number two Phil Kessel’s supposed refusal to play on the third line takes away the great team balance.  Number three the addition of Jack Johnson playing one third of every game.

Every time I’ve said wow Jack Johnson looks bad I have heard people say “give him time”. I will be the first to admit I liked the Rutherford signing and had high hopes that Johnson was just a victim of Columbus coach Tortella’s system. Here we are 19 games into the season the Penguins are in last place and Jack Johnson is the team’s worst player at -10.

I’ve heard from many hockey people that believe the +/- is not a true representation of a player and I partially agree. If a entire team is bad they can drag your +/- down.

The +/- is very accountable is when you have the teams worst.  That means you are dragging the rest of the team down and you are the problem.

Johnson has been scored on while defending 10 goals more than the ones that the Pens scored while he was on the ice. To put that in perspective, the Penguins have lost 6 to 8 games this season by a goal (depending on whether you count empty net goals).

I know you’re still thinking the same as everyone else, it’s only 19 games in let him work through it. The problem is for Johnson it’s not 19 games in, it’s an entire career.

Since Johnson entered the league 12 years ago there is no other player on offense or defense in the NHL that has a worse +/- than he has. In fact he is -8 worse than the next closest person. For those mathematicians out there, that is 13 seasons of being the worst overall player in the NHL.  It is time to give up the experiment.

For the Penguins to succeed Sullivan needs to stand up to Rutherford exactly how Dan Bylsma never did with Ray Shero.  Sullivan has to tell Rutherford that Johnson is not working out.  It’s time to bench Johnson, it’s time to move Johnson and it’s time to give Juuso Riikola the defensive position until Justin Shultz is back from injury.