Prediction: Andreas Johnsson Will Score 20 Goals
Oof. Big oof. This was a bad prediction. There’s no other way around it. There was a short while where Andreas Johnsson looked like a really good player for this team, but that time has come and gone. He’s no longer playing with Jack Hughes. He’s mostly playing on the fourth line, and he’s close to being a healthy scratch.
Right now, he has three goals and seven points. Let’s pretend he was going to play a full 56-game season (which he won’t). He’d have at best six goals this season if he stayed on his current pace. That is not 20 goals. That is nowhere close to 20 goals. That is like a 10-goal pace over 82 games. This is not a great move for the Tom Fitzgerald regime.
Hopefully, Johnsson isn’t a one-hit-wonder and the Devils can figure him out. They lost a good prospect in Joey Anderson and they are stuck paying him $3.4 million for the two seasons after this year. It’s not like the Devils have a problem with the cap, but since it’s likely not going up for a couple of years, spending useless money on a fourth-line player could really hurt when it’s time to pay Hughes.
Johnsson shouldn’t be completely given up on, but he needs to show a lot more to be a crucial part of this team going forward. Maybe he’s a sunk cost. Maybe the Devils are forced to buy him out just to get a spot in the lineup. Johnsson gets a modified no-trade clause in the final year of his contract, so the Devils may be looking to move him for spare parts just to get rid of the asset. Either way, this prediction was downright terrible.