Looking at it, Johansen is sneakily pretty overrated. For all the hype he gets as the franchise center they've always needed and his acquisition being a franchise-altering one, his production is more in line with a really good 2nd line center. Thats funny.
He's a pretty high end playmaker who is quietly having a bit of a down season for his standards. He's hit between 60 and 70 points pretty consistently before this season which is certainly acceptable for a 1C. But I agree, if your definition of a franchise center is a PPG type guy, he is definitely not quite at that level. More like an average 1C or a great 2C. At around 18 minutes per game, his TOI is somewhere around that too. Not quite at the 19 or 20 minutes a game you would expect a franchise center to play.
Every forward on the Preds seems to be overrated these days though. Forsberg's numbers are fairly comparable to Rakell over the past two seasons, and Rakell is actually on pace to outscore him this season, but I'd bet the average hockey fan or media pundit would take Forsberg over Rakell in a fantasy draft. There really isn't much of a dropoff in production between Arviddson and Henrique either this season. The dropoff from Fiala to Kase isn't too severe either when you factor in the games Kase has missed for injury. Perry and Turris are pretty comparable also in terms of production. Same for Silfverberg and Jarnkrok. Honestly, they've probably got a bit more depth than us at forward (Smith is producing more than a one-legged Kesler right now, Cogs and Hartnell are probably a wash in terms of production, and Hartman is a bit more productive than Ritchie) but overall our forward corps and theirs are pretty evenly matched in terms of roles and production, especially considering that Getzlaf is far and away the better player between him and Johansen.
The Preds forwards really look like a group that is the sum of all its parts, which I think gives people the impression that they are more elite than they actually are. That, and the fact that they do have two elite players on defense in Subban and Josi, and an elite goaltender in Rinne. Those guys are legit and deserve to be considered franchise players IMO, and coupled with a group of six 50 to 60 point forwards spread out over their top nine, makes them a dangerous team. We are close but their defense (didn't even mention Ekholm) gives them a significant edge which is why this would be a big game for us to win.
