“Game 82.”

That’s how long it took Bobby Ryan to learn Guy Boucher’s system, by his own admission. He had just scored his fifth goal of the 2017 NHL Playoffs to give the Senators a 1-0 series lead against the Penguins. Ryan was coming off a miserable regular season, notching just 25 points in 62 games while in year two of a 7-year, $7.25 million contract. But now he was second on the team in playoff scoring, which could only mean one thing: he was finally “learning the system.”

"It took me longer than most,” Ryan went on. “I had a tough year with the learning curve. I had some growing pains with it, and I think that's evident. ... I bought in like everyone else on the team and stuck with it. I'm finally, I guess, getting a reward for it."

The redemptive arc wrote itself: that whole season, it sure looked like Ryan had aged rapidly and made the seven-year extension look instantly catastrophic, but the far more likely explanation was, it simply took him a full training camp and the entire NHL season to “learn the system,” which he suddenly had -- probably exclaiming “EUREKA!” after whatever caused this system-epiphany -- and now he was right again. He definitely wasn’t just the same guy and happened to score 6 goals in a 19 game stretch at an important time of year.

After Ottawa lost, the offseason pieces about why Next Year Would Be Different™ for Ryan followed. Something had to be different, right? No one was gonna write the article about how Ryan was actually just as cooked as he plainly appeared to everyone, and that the contract was absolutely as bad as everyone thought.

Ryan scored 11 goals the next year, then 15 this year, as the Senators legendarily imploded. Even Erik Karlsson wasn’t enough to incentivize other teams to take his contract off their books.

But at least he knows the system now.

***

On July 1st, 2018, the Penguins signed Jack Johnson to a 5-year, $16.5 million deal. The contract was met with immediate backlash from anyone capable of noticing things or using Google. Johnson was already 31 and coming off a season where he scored 11 points in 77 games for the Blue Jackets, got healthy-scratched for the playoffs, and posted an abysmal-even-by-his-standards -5.4 relative Corsi number that was well in line with a full career of being a glaring possession black hole. He was aging, slow, and terrible with the puck -- everything the Penguins absolutely did not need -- and here he was, signed until he was 37.

And yet, nearly every article about the Johnson signing (and for months afterwards) waived away these concerns with one patronizing nod to the detractors. This usually took the form of a sentence like, “while critics are quick to point out Johnson’s advanced statistics haven’t always been the best…” or something along those lines, before proceeding to make up reasons why he’s actually good or why the Pens can fix him with their ultra secret Gonchar voodoo magic (that apparently didn’t work on Matt Hunwick or Derrick Pouilot the previous Fall.)

Writers and commentators treated the Johnson detractors like they were dwelling on some petty detail from his past, as though everyone was ripping on him for that time he wet his pants during First Grade naptime, and not for a full decade of unambiguously terrible objective data. This created an instantly-combative atmosphere where Johnson’s badness got taken as read, and became too unremarkable to point out anymore. Instead, fans and media members spent the entire season grasping for some redemptive arc -- “Johnson’s been better lately,” “Johnson’s been better since Marcus Pettersson came over,” “Johnson’s been better since switching to the left side,” “Johnson’s been better since the Vernal Equinox” -- take your pick.

If Johnson had a seven-game stretch where he was playing better, rest assured, you’d hear about it, complete with quotes from Johnson or Mike Sullivan or Jim Rutherford and whatever cherry-picked stats (he’s a +3 in his last five games!) could give anyone a flickering distraction from the Emperor’s New Clothes truth that was evident since day one: Johnson was, is, and will remain exactly as bad as he appears.

Even today, almost any article that mentions Johnson comes with some superfluous disclaimer that he’s “not nearly as bad as fans think.” First off, yes he is. And second, why doesn’t Kris Letang get this same kid-gloved treatment? Or Malkin? Or Kessel? Or Murray? Or even Dominik Simon? There’s legions of Pens fans who leap to crucify these guys anytime they’re even remotely adjacent to an unsuccessful play. We don’t feel the need to keep reiterating, as if to convince even ourselves of this fact, that “Kris Letang may have made a mistake on this play, but keep in mind, he is actually good so lay off” (even though in this case it’s true).

Part of this, I suspect, is the usage of Johnson as a proxy to prove that advanced stats users don’t know it all, even though Johnson’s conventional stats and eye-test badness are just as glaring. But more than anything, the backlash to the backlash is simply a case of pure Jack Johnson fatigue. An article titled “Johnson, Who Is Bad, Is Still Bad” isn’t a column. But “Johnson’s Been Better Since X Happened” is. So we’re left with this entire season of arbitrary endpoints and misguided optimism where people pretend to believe that every time they win a poker hand with a Pair of 7s that maybe “a Pair of 7s” has actually turned a corner and is better than we think it is. It’s willfully obtuse, but we have to believe it, both to generate content and for our own sanity.

Now the Penguins have been bounced in Four Games, thanks in large part to their defensive corps’ pathological inability to handle the Islanders’ forecheck. Jim Rutherford took it upon himself to headbutt the Twitter beehive by claiming in his cleanout-day presser, “I think our defense is the best now that it's been since I've been here as a group.” Maybe he was just posturing and actually does plan to shake up the D this Summer, but he did criticize the team in plenty of other ways, and the Penguins did play Johnson in all but one game this season, so it’s just as likely he genuinely believes he’s not a problem.

Johnson scored one goal this year, was the team’s worst possession defenseman (outside of his frequent partner Jusso Riikola, and even he scored twice in his 37 games), statistically dragged down everyone he played with, got absolutely caved by the Islanders, and is now 32, with four more years on his contract at $3.25 mil a year on the second-most capped-out team in the NHL. He is the Penguins’ absolute number one biggest problem. Any articles aimed at convincing fans he’s not as bad as they think, or that he’s actually “been better since [pick your made-up thing],” or that dodge the question entirely and say “he’s not the Penguins only problem” (no shit, no team in sports only has one problem and literally no one is ever arguing that), are an abdication of duty that’s far more personal and reactionary than anything his HATERS (i.e., noticers of stuff) are saying.

But hey, maybe he’ll turn it around next year, just like Bobby Ryan did. And while we’re at it, maybe Mark Recchi can “fix” Milan Lucic?