Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom.

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In honour of Kent Johnson's excellent three-point night against the Leafs, let's kick things off by examining his yo-yo of a season to date. Has he turned things around? Are the six points he has scored in his last four games indicative of things to come?

After sitting as a healthy scratch twice in the opening month of the season, Johnson was eventually sent down to the AHL, where he spent the entire month of November. His 15 points across 10 games definitively asserted his claim to full-time NHL duty, and he was called up to rejoin the Blue Jackets at the start of December. He then went pointless for his first three games before exploding for this recent hot streak.

He is still not shooting much (only nine shots in seven games) and has been deployed largely on the wing with Patrik Laine and Cole Sillinger on Columbus' third line. That line has had its minutes heavily restricted despite flashes of solid chemistry. Here is a beautiful assist from Johnson against Toronto. He intercepts a clumsy pass behind the net and immediately feeds Laine in the slot, showing off that creative, high-level skill that led to Columbus taking him fifth overall in 2021.

Kent Johnson's beautiful pass finds Patrik Laine who opens the scoring for the @BlueJacketsNHL! 😍 pic.twitter.com/eLckwqanWx

— NHL (@NHL) December 15, 2023

His other points (both goals) that game were both equally beautiful.

Kent Johnson tips in the Blue Jackets second of the night. 💥 pic.twitter.com/OVTFQA0SEC

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 15, 2023

TOP SHELF KENT JOHNSON! 🎯

The Blue Jackets avoid the loss following their @SUBWAYCanada OT winner. pic.twitter.com/zdaZdEPSgI

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) December 15, 2023

With Laine heading to injured reserve for at least six weeks, perhaps Johnson will have more space to unleash that wicked shot more often. Increasing his shooting volume would go a long way towards upping his value in fantasy.

Underlying metrics show that he has been lucky so far this year. He has a slightly inflated PDO (1044), a high secondary assist rate (50%), and a fairly significant gap between the actual (10) and expected (5.18) even-strength goals scored with him on the ice.

These measures all suggest regression but could easily be offset by an increase in deployment. He has averaged under 13 minutes a night so far this year and is still seeing less than 50% of the available PP time—mostly on the second unit. Columbus (10-16-5) is second last in the Eastern Conference and has seen players struggle up and down the lineup, so Johnson is by no means alone.

In the short term, unless he can maintain this recent hot streak, Johnson has not yet consistently performed like a top-six NHL player. Examining his contributions via JFresh's model, Johnson's finishing and playmaking shine through, but he has had an extremely limited impact overall on the Columbus offence (2%).

Keep expectations modest for the 21-year-old in 2023-24. He is currently on pace for 49 points, and that would be a fantastic result all things considered. Assuming he sticks in the NHL moving forward, we can expect a Johnson breakout roughly halfway through 2024-25, which should be in the neighbourhood of 65+ points.

He is still on track to become a top-six skill player who shines with the man advantage.

Hockey Prospecting's model gives him about a 45% chance of becoming a star-level player and suggests Nazem Kadri (CGY) as a player who has followed a similar trajectory to this point. A fringe star, Kadri has been a wildly inconsistent producer throughout his career, pacing for anywhere between 45 and 100 points from season to season. His career average of 57 points feels like a realistic floor for Johnson, who possesses the dynamism to consistently break the 70-point mark if everything breaks right.

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Alex Laferriere (LAK) continues to be an intriguing, under-the-radar option for the Kings.

Five points in 25 games is not going to cut it for fantasy, but this is a 22-year-old contributing at the NHL level directly out of college. As his deployment chart shows, he has been heavily sheltered and is often seeing time alongside stars like Kevin Fiala and the struggling Pierre-Luc Dubois.

While Laferriere's play-driving results are sub-par so far, even in that sheltered role, he has consistently stood out to me due to his speed, tenacity, and creativity. As he continues to acclimate and earn more ice time, his already solid shot (two per game) and hit (one per game) rates will climb accordingly. Those are solid peripherals, and he clearly has the skill to contribute on the scoresheet as well.

His recent goal against the Jets was both cheeky and incredibly skilled:

Alex Laferriere scored an absolute beauty from below the goal line 😮 pic.twitter.com/DERGuwjdE2

📢 advertisement:

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) December 14, 2023

While his high-end college production came at a later age than we usually see from star-level NHL players—HP gives him a 1% star potential—I increasingly view Laferriere as this year's Matthew Poitras lite. He looks like he belongs out there and has a ton of runway to improve.

60+ points feels like a realistic expectation for him a couple seasons from now.

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There are plenty of interesting storylines unfolding at the NCAA level this year.

Perhaps the most surprising is that Jack Devine, Florida's seventh-round pick in 2022, currently leads the nation in goals with 15 in only 18 games played. He has developed great chemistry with another former seventh-round pick, linemate Massimo Rizzo (PHI), who sits atop the leaderboard with 31 points, fueled by a whopping 24 assists.

Jack Devine puts the Pioneers in front with less than 5 minutes to play for tonight's @Safeway Goal of the Game!#GoPios pic.twitter.com/g6yG73txg0

— Denver Hockey (@DU_Hockey) December 10, 2023

As a team, Denver has struggled defensively but is averaging nearly five and a half goals per game right now, and Rizzo and Devine have been a huge part of that.

The other major straw stirring the Pioneer's drink has been Zeev Buium (2024), who is leading all defensemen in scoring as a draft-eligible skater with 25 points in 18 games. To contextualize Buium's insane production, he is currently outproducing Seamus Casey (NJD, 23 in 18), Scott Morrow (CAR, 20 in 16), and Lane Hutson (MTL, 20 in 15)—all of whom have at least an additional year of college experience.

For the first time all season somebody has knocked Michkov off the top of the PNHLe rankings.
Zeev Buium is on a 12 game point streak and posted three more assists last night… as a defenseman.
If Buium keeps this up he'll continue to solidify himself inside the #NHLDraft top 10 pic.twitter.com/yg8PFYqdUy

— Mason Black (@NHLRankKing) December 10, 2023

Take all this with a grain of salt though.

Denver has had a fairly light schedule relative to their top competition, and many of Buium's points have been secondary assists. Regardless, he is trending to be a top-ten pick in 2024 and should be a serious fantasy asset moving forward. But Devine and Rizzo are peaking relatively late, which means their chance of becoming NHL stars remains quite low.

Still, as seventh-round picks, this kind of production has to be exciting for their teams—especially for Philadelphia, who were able to pluck Rizzo and a fifth-round pick from the Canes for David Kase (who?) If you are rebuilding in a league with a deep farm, these two would both make a decent stash, even just as flip bait for fellow owners blinded by their gaudy production.

Yet another seventh-rounder challenging for the NCAA scoring lead is Nashville's Aiden Fink, who has 23 points in 19 games as a Freshman with Penn St. I featured Fink back in July as a high-upside depth option from the 2023 draft. He conceivably fell in the draft due to being undersized (5-9, 152 lbs) and a relatively weak skater. But he just lights it up everywhere he goes. It is extremely promising for his NHL future that he has been able to maintain the prolific production he first displayed in the AJHL (97 in 54) this year while transitioning to college.

You will have to forgive me for inundating you with graphs this week, but check out Fink in the HP model. You would be hard-pressed to find a better-looking seventh-rounder in terms of progression and potential.

Another Conor Garland in the making?

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Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.