Toronto Maple Leafs: Andreas Johnsson Is a 1st Line Left-Winger

The Toronto Maple Leafs are focused on signing Mitch Marner to a contract extension.

When the season ended, the Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager, Kyle Dubas, made it clear that signing Marner to new contract was the team’s top priority.

This makes sense, as Marner is a foundational, franchise-level player.  Nothing else the Leafs have going on could come close to being as important signing Marner, and avoiding another Nylander-like mess, is.

But the Leafs also have to worry about signing forwards Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson. The two young wingers both need new contracts, and while both will most likely end up signing short term deals for around three million dollar cap-hits, there is going to be discussion about their value to the team until they are signed.

But make no mistake, signing both of them is important.  Just because they’re not franchise players doesn’t mean that they aren’t important members of the team.

Andreas Johnsson

Kasperi Kapanen is a great player, and his speed is dangerous.  Ideally he would line up on the third line, below Marner and Nylander on the right-wing depth chart.

But Johnsson is different.

Johnsson is the team’s best left-winger.

As such, he’s much more valuable than Kapanen.  But even if he weren’t more valuable to the Leafs in this specific situation, I think he is also the better player.

A former seventh-round pick, Johnson is 24 and just complete his rookie season. 

He finished with 20 goals and 43 points, and he finished the year on the left side of Auston Matthews.

That’s pretty good for a rookie, but the points don’t tell the whole story.

Johnsson has had 16 goals and 20 assists at even-strength.   That was good for the 20th highest point total for a left winger in the NHL.  He had more points than Max Paccioretty, JVR, or Jonathan Druin.  (All stat snaturalstattrick.com).

That’s not too bad, but things get even better when you break down his scoring to a points per minute basis.  Johnsson spend some of the year injured – he had a concussion – and started the season on the fourth line.

So accounting for that, and converting to rate stats, Johnsson scored 2.45 points/ 60 minutes of ice time.  That is a first line rate of scoring. It is good for eighth best among left-wingers.

It is more per minute of 5v5 ice time than Ovechkin, Debrincat or Huberdeau.

For the last 30 games of the season, Johnsson scored at a higher rate than Auston Matthews.

So…….he’s pretty good.

The Leafs have turned a seventh round pick into a first liner.  Not too shabby.  It will be interesting to see what he signs for, but we know one thing: the Toronto Maple Leafs simply must resign him.