The veteran left-handed defenseman requested a trade from the Colombus Blue Jackets. Would Jack Johnson be a good fit for the New York Rangers?
The New York Rangers as is are not serious playoff contenders. They are playing on borrowed time in the form of a cushion of points from a dominant November. The team has one regulation win in their past ten games and looks outright lost on the ice. If the front office wanted to make a move at the deadline to try and jump into the race Johnson is a candidate.
The Rangers defense has been the team’s sore spot for the better part of three seasons now. The personnel has changed but the quality of play as a whole has not. The defense has not lived up to the expectations for the team and is the biggest factor holding the team back. Henrik Lundqvist is amongst the best goalies in the entire league and the forward group is amongst the deepest in the league.
The defense at the moment is in an even more difficult position than usual. The unit was struggling prior to Ryan McDonagh’s back spasms flaring up prior to the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Now without McDonagh, the unit is simply overmatched by any team they play. Without his usual workhorse in McDonagh, head coach Alain Vigneault used Steven Kampfer the most Sunday against the Penguins.
If the front office knows that Chris Kreider will be 100% healthy and able to play in the playoffs with no consequences, they could add Johnson at a reasonable price.
The track record
The former number three overall pick of the Carolina Hurricanes is an 11 year veteran of the NHL. Johnson has played first pair minutes for almost the entirety of his career and done so under tough circumstances. The defenseman got 56% of his starts for faceoffs in the defensive zone and still maintained a respectable 47.1 Corsi for.
Johnson has posted a solid NHL career in a top pair role on a team that for a majority of the time was outright bad. Before the Blue Jackets recent awakening, they had consistently been amongst the worst teams in the league. Now that the Blue Jackets are in the midst of their team blossoming Johnson is an odd man out.
He is currently averaging four fewer minutes per game this season than his career average. Both Seth Jones and Zach Werenski have jumped him on the depth chart and it has limited his production. Using ownthepuck.com’s HERO measures, Johnson’s current production is that of an average second pair defenseman.
Who’s out?
As of the moment, the Rangers have seven defensemen on the active roster. As mentioned earlier, McDonagh is suffering from back spasms and is questionable to return to the lineup for Tuesday’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers. The injury puts Steven Kampfer in the lineup and forces other players to step up to replace the captain’s production.
Johnson would be an immediate upgrade over half of the defenseman currently in the lineup. He’d be a solid defensive partner for any of the established players in the lineup. More importantly, Johnson is a defenseman who is talented at zone exits, a major weakness of the team. If he were paired with McDonagh, Shattenkirk, or Skjei they’d be helped immensely.
The team’s defensive pairs are a work in progress from game to game. It has been a feeling out process all season long with uncomfortable partners. None of the pairs have any chemistry with each other and struggle to communicate. Johnson could be slotted anywhere in the lineup and he would be a net positive for the Rangers.
The Price
A player that has requested a trade has little leverage in the grand scheme of things. Luckily for Johnson, he is in the final year of his contract and thus an expendable asset. The Rangers have several players who could help bolster the Blue Jackets lineup that would also make sense in a swap.
The strength of the Blue Jackets is their overall depth from top to bottom. There is no glaring flaw in the team, but no element that is truly exceptional. The asking price for Johnson is hard to establish because the trade market has not yet been established for this deadline. The first trade of a deadline is what sets the tone for negotiations league-wide.
Last season the Rangers traded a second and a third-round pick to the Red Wings for Brendan Smith. Smith was also in the final year of his contract and a veteran defenseman with a proven track record similar to Johnson. However, the Blue Jackets are not rebuilding like the Red Wings were and would likely want a player on the NHL roster.
This makes the terms of a trade likely to be Johnson in exchange for another veteran. Johnson carries a cap hit of 1.9 million for the rest of the 2017-2018 season. The Rangers currently have enough cap space to afford Johnson, so making salaries match is not an issue.
The Rangers could offer the Blue Jackets a number of different players and all would make sense. They could swap Johnson for Smith and give the Jackets a veteran defenseman on an affordable contract under team control in exchange for an expiring one. They could also swap Michael Grabner for Johnson and sure up their defense at the expense of their offense.
If the Rangers acquired Johnson it would not guarantee them a playoff spot. However, it would be a step in the right direction for the rest of the season. Whether or not the team chose to pursue Johnson as a free agent after the season is another question.