Early 2022 predictions for Marcus Johansson

Informal skates are still going on at MedStar Capitals Iceplex and we’re just a week away from training camp. We still have a few more Washington Capitals players to hand out early predictions to and today we’re going to look at Marcus Johansson.

After being drafted by the Capitals in the first round at 24th overall in the 2009 NHL Draft, Johansson spent seven seasons in Washington before he was traded to the New Jersey Devils in 2017 for draft picks.

That came in a summer where the Capitals were in a cap crunch and had just extended the contract of Evgeny Kuznetsov.

Johansson’s best season came in that 2016-17 season where he recorded 24 goals and 34 assists for 58 points as the Caps won their second straight Presidents Trophy for the best record in the league.

Since leaving the Caps, MoJo has been a journeyman. In addition to the Devils, he also spent time with the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, Minnesota Wild, and Seattle Kraken. With the Bruins, Johansson appeared in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2019.

It was while he was with the Kraken where he got traded back to the Caps as the Caps sent the Kraken Daniel Sprong. It’s too early to tell who won the trade. Sprong was signed to a PTO with the Kraken recently. The Caps on the other hand chose to re-sign MoJo.

Johansson’s new deal is one year and worth $1.1 million. He enters his 13th season and will turn 32 in October. He had six goals and 17 assists for 23 points with the Kraken last season. After the trade back to the Caps, he had three goals and three assists for six points in the final 18 games.

So what kind of a season can we expect from Johansson this year? He will be older in age and he probably won’t score 20 goals. But maybe I’ll be wrong. A safe number to bet on would be 13 goals and 20 assists for 33 points while most likely spending time on the Capitals third line.