Tyler Johnson Is A Free Agent The Penguins Should Avoid

Tyler Johnson is a former 20-goal scorer who remains unsigned. Should the Pittsburgh Penguins check in on the 12-year veteran?

In 2023-24, the Pittsburgh Penguins scored 253 goals, good enough for 19th overall in the NHL. The team employed four 20-goal scorers and then traded one of them, Jake Guentzel, leaving Sidney Crosby (42), Bryan Rust (28), and Evgeni Malkin (27) in the club.

The Penguins did have 11 players reach double digits in goals, which is good, but both the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers had five and advanced to the Stanley Cup Final.

Most fans around the league know that Pittsburgh’s lineup is one of the oldest. Considering their 20-goal scorers combined are 104 years old, at some point, General Manager Kyle Dubas will have to start filling lineup spots with younger players who can score 20 goals.

That mentally leads us to two-time Stanley Cup champion Tyler Johnson, who is still a free agent and is a former four-time 20-goal scorer.

Johnson has been skating with the Chicago Blackhawks for the past three seasons, where he’s collected 32 goals in 149 games.

Coming off a seven-year contract that paid him $5 million annually, his recent statistics indicate that he will take a significant pay cut, but in a stronger lineup, he could reach 20 goals again.

However, there’s one slight catch. He’s 33. If he came to Pittsburgh, he’d be one of six players 33 or older, which means the team’s demographics remain the same—they are old.

This has nothing to do with age; Johnson is still a professional hockey player and has had plenty of Stanley Cup playoff experience.

The biggest problem is that the Penguins continue to acquire players on the other side of 30, hoping to recapture some of their past glory. See Jeff Carter and Erik Karlsson.

For example, division rivals, the New York Rangers, brought in Barclay Goodrow at 28 with hopes that his experience with the Tampa Bay Lightning would help the team get over the hump.

Even though he played in a lineup that won the Presidents’ Trophy last season, he regressed so much in 2023-24 that the Rangers put him on waivers to buy him out. He’s only 30 but went from 13 to 11 to four goals in the past three seasons.

Johnson hasn’t scored over 20 goals since 2019, before the Lightning won back-to-back titles in 2020 and 2021. Despite his contributions, they dealt him to Chicago for Brent Seabrook, an apparent cap dump by the Blackhawks.

Although Johnson is a routine 30-point player, the Penguins already have plenty of those and instead need a difference maker, someone who moves the needle. Having that knowledge, Pittsburgh should not acquire Johnson despite his past accomplishments.