Dipsy Doodle
Rent A Barn
- May 28, 2006
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I mean this from the bottom of my heart: if you honestly think that Jack Johnson was the sole reason for every single problem on the Penguins last year, your opinion is worthless because you're showing yourself to not be at all rational. I don't know if it's laziness, scapegoating or just being a fanboy, but it's just absolutely absurd in every way.
When I read that, I basically interpret that to mean "the Penguins have a perfect team outside of Jack Johnson". For a team that got embarrassed in a 4-0 sweep in the playoffs last year, yeah that's just bull****. Regardless of what Johnson did, Kessel was a negative player analytically both offensively and defensively. He put up 2 ES goals from February 1st until the end of the season. He had a stretch of 29 games without an ES goal. That's the reality of what Kessel did last year, and the Penguins were 100% in the right to pull the plug on him when they did.
Kessel's production over the course of the season (PP, ES, whatever) and underlying numbers with and without JJ over the past 2 seasons bear out exactly what I'm saying.
None of that is in dispute. The data couldn't be more clear.
So, nonsense like parsing with arbitrary timeframes, isolated stats being used as the sole determinant of a player's value (ES goals > all!), ad hominems, etc are the only refuge for those wanting to diminish Kessel's performance.
Not my problem if you infer things that weren't implied about the team as a whole.