ZeroPucksGiven
Registered User
- Feb 28, 2017
- 6,338
- 4,275
This whole Johnson trade/no trade situation just makes me wish we had some answers from the Penguins on a couple of questions:
- What do the Penguins actually want to get out of trading Johnson? Is it cap space, clearing out some expensive and expendable depth or getting rid of a bad player? Or is it a combination of 2 or all 3 of those? Seeing how they were willing to swap Johnson for Rask in a potential Kessel deal, I'm not sure they're gunning for cap space here.
- Why has Johnson not been traded yet? Is the asking price to take him too high or is JR refusing to add any significant assets or retain salary? Or is JR just targeting a return that isn't feasible for Johnson?
- Is there any situation where the team is ultimately fine with keeping Johnson or happy to keep him? Or is he 100% a dead man walking in their eyes?
This whole situation just seems weird. If they really wanted to just trade Johnson, I think they could do it in an afternoon. If they just want to clear out an expensive defenseman since they're super deep on D, you can probably trade Johnson for a similarly expensive forward. If they want to clear out cap space by moving Johnson, that's going to be painful but also doable. The big question I have is this: if the team wants to trade Johnson as much as it appears to want to, why have they not bitten the bullet on moving him yet?
Why doesn't the team just bench him, like they did for Game 1 of the playoffs?
I'd prefer he's traded so Sully isn't tempted to do something stupid, but i'm fine with him just in the press box not actively hurting this team's chances of winning the freakin game.