As predicted, Wyatt Johnston’s sophomore season was a great one.
The young Canadian did more than level up. He eclipsed his previous NHL point totals by February. He also reached milestones, including when he tallied his first career hat trick in March versus the San Jose Sharks. On a roster featuring Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz, Johnston led the Stars in goals with 32, and I’d argue his 16 points in 19 playoff games was even more impressive. After all, his goal-scoring pace in the postseason was higher than it was in the regular season.
Can it get better for the 21-year-old pivot? And if so, what’s the price tag on that?
We now have some clue about the latter after Seattle signed fellow 2021 draftee Matty Beniers to a seven-year extension at $7.14 million annually. It’s a good deal for a strong, two-way center. I know Stars fans have strong feelings about Beniers, perhaps believing Johnston was the better player during theirCalder Trophy race. That’s not new. Robertson versus Kirill Kaprizov, John Klingberg versus Aaron Ekblad, Mike Modano versus Sergei Makarov—it’s hockey tradition for a Star to come up short in a controversial Rookie of the Year race before going on to have a standout career. I’m not here to quibble over which player is better, mind you. (OK, fine, the answer is Johnston, but as with Robertson vs. Kaprizov, it’s close.) I’m more interested in where Johnston ranks among the game’s elite young forwards, what that means for his next contract, and what that all means for Dallas.
We’ll be doing something similar to our Hintz exercise from earlier in the month. In this case, I’ll be looking at Johnston’s shift-to-shift value compared to his peers over the last two to three seasons in terms of total offense (even-strength net rating plus power play net rating), total defense (even-strength defense plus shorthanded rating), and the black box lump sum (expected Wins Above Replacement), adjusted for minutes. We’ll compare Johnston to two types of cohorts: 1) other centers his age who signed big deals before or approaching the final year of their entry-level contract and 2) the projected Team Canada roster.
The list below comes from Sportsnet’s list of comparables to Beniers. Not only will this give us clues about Johnston’s next contract, but it will also convey his overall value. Forwards are listed by rank in terms of expected wins.
Johnston, as you’d expert, stacks up well. He’s top three defensively and right below the most elite young offensive players. You might wonder what the contracts looked like for those who rate higher. The answer is $63.6 million (Josh Norris), $57.2 million (Clayton Keller), and $49 million (Matt Boldy). Boldy is coming off consecutive 60-point campaigns, while Keller has 162 points over the last two seasons. At minimum, Johnston will be getting something closer to the Norris contract, which is $7.95 million per year. However, Evolving-Hockey has Johnston projected at an eight-year deal worth $8.8 million per. If Johnston gets paid closer to $9 million a year, will Stars fans look at him the same?
Somebody recently asked me if I thought Johnston would make Team Canada in the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off, a round-robin tournament involving players from Canada, the U.S., Sweden, and Finland. Like with the Beniers debate, I’m not here to quibble over whether Johnston belongs in that group. But using the same exercise as above and comparing him to the projected Team Canada roster yields the following:
Johnston is a notch below Canada’s best players, although still Team Canada quality.
One of the common worries about Dallas’s offense, which I’ve taken great lengths to dispel, concerns how the team replaces Joe Pavelski’s 67 points. Even if you don’t buy the argument that Pavelski’s retirement will be addition by subtraction, there’s a good chance a full season of Johnston with Logan Stankoven will accomplish this all on its own. Let’s use some grade-school math. If Stankoven scores at the same pace as he did in his 24 regular-season appearances last year, that’ll be an extra 48 points. Johnston would need to score 19 more points for both to replace Pavelski’s 67 points. I don’t find anything unreasonable with this projection considering the average production for his peers over the last three seasons in the first group is 61 points.
In fact, I think the real conversation about Johnston is whether he can creep toward that second group, whose average production is 87 points. Am I anointing Johnston as the Stars’ top center as early as this season? Kind of. It’s still too soon to declare how good he can be, especially at his age. But Johnston already matched Hintz’s point total last year with 65. And judging by the table above, his intrinsic value is already on par with the best Canadian forwards in the game.
Keep it up, and Dallas might have a genuine 1A-1B center tandem on its hands. It’s impossible to understate how big of an advantage this would be. You’d be hard-pressed to name a team in a similar situation. Edmonton with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl is the gold standard, but outside of that, New Jersey is the only team that comes close to what Hintz and a fully realized Johnston would do for the Stars. The history of elite centers backing up elite centers is short but storied. Think of Rod Brind’Amour behind Eric Staal in Carolina, Peter Forsberg “behind” Joe Sakic, Sergei Fedorov “behind” Steve Yzerman, David Krejci behind Patrice Bergeron. Going farther back, we’re talking Ron Francis behind Mario Lemieux, and yes, Joe Nieuwendyk behind Mike Modano. Teams don’t usually get to boast that kind of depth, but when they do, they tend to make noise. Like, at least one Stanley Cup level of noise.
Still, part of becoming that player is becoming that adult. How well will Johnston play when the expectation is no longer how well he plays behind Robertson and Hintz, but how consistently he sets the standard for them? Money always changes the perception of a player, and the expectations, too. Fairly or not, once the front office awards Johnston his new deal, the benchmark will shift from being mentioned among the best in his age group to the best in the game, period.
Of course, he could head that off at the pass by raising his game for the third year in a row. Given how fast Johnston has grown, there’s no reason to doubt it’s possible. And if he’s ready for that next level, then so are the Stars.
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