Here's an excerpt about another player whose game sounds eerily familiar to Johnson's, and who went well over a ppg his freshman ncaa season. And who also hasn't been able to overcome his lack of speed and strength to put it all together. Granted he was drafted in the middle of the 1st round, but he's already been traded from the team that drafted him.
"*Player* learned to view the game through the prism of his mitts. His default play is to look for opportunities to use his one-on-one skill -- that’s how he found success coming through the Junior and college ranks. However, few players can pull off that type of game against the top players in the world and he is, evidently, not one of them. He lacks the complementary skills to primarily play it.
In a vacuum, his skating ranks as about NHL average, but it can look below-average at times due to a lower pace of play and some poor habits. He often stops striding a couple of steps away from a good play, cutting forechecking and offensive rush routes short in order to put himself in a position to challenge defenders in a joust. He drives toward them instead of toward space and only engages them with his hands. He attacks in a glide and tries to slip the puck under-stick and around skates -- something that works at lower levels of competition, but not against more fleet of foot NHL defenders."
