Kent Johnson helping to fuel playoff push for Blue Jackets

Kent Johnson isn't ready to start thinking about the Stanley Cup Playoffs yet, but the Columbus Blue Jackets forward understands what's possible this season.

"I think there's some times where I'm dreaming and thinking, we’ve got to get to the playoffs," he told NHL.com recently. "It's the goal that's there. But obviously you've got to just focus on your day to day and doing everything you need to do to win games. ... It's such a different feeling, coming back from the (NHL) All-Star break last year versus [the 4 Nations Face-Off break] this year. The feeling is just so much better. It's so much more exciting to play these games."

Johnson's play is one reason there's playoff excitement in Columbus. In his fourth NHL season, the 22-year-old has 21 goals and 45 points -- both NHL career highs -- in 54 games, helping the Blue Jackets (31-28-9) enter their game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday (7 p.m. ET; FDSNOH, SN-PIT, NHLN, SN, TVAS) three points behind the Montreal Canadiens for the second wild card from the Eastern Conference. It would be Columbus' first postseason appearance since 2020.

"'KJ' is a guy that drives the offense," Blue Jackets coach Dean Evason said. "He carries the puck through the neutral zone, is on the entries on the power play. He's done a lot of things for us."

Johnson has been able to do so because he's recovered from the torn labrum in his left shoulder that limited him to 42 games last season.

But he's also feeling faster and stronger after working with trainer Paul Whissel for the first time during the offseason.

"I talked to some other teammates and learned some new things," Johnson said. "Changed a lot up, and I definitely felt like I got better results on the speed from it. I think I was always getting stronger every year, but it was hard to tell. In my game, I think the speed and quickness is a bit more important, and just my balance. So it was always getting stronger on the scale and my weight was going up.

"I think this year I trained smarter, and it translated to hockey and actually winning battles more. It's been good."

Whissel works with several current and former Blue Jackets players, including Cole Sillinger, Sean Kuraly, Jack Roslovic (now with the Carolina Hurricanes) and Jake Bean (Calgary Flames).

After watching them progress through their workouts, Johnson became interested.

Kuraly was glad to help.

"I was just actually doing my thing and other guys saw and wanted to ask some questions, and I was happy to share it with some of the young guys," Kuraly said. "I think it's really helped a lot of them. You can see how they've bounced back from some injuries, what they've been doing in their summer workouts with their speed and strength. So I'm happy to share a positive influence on me and the amazing things he (Whissel) does."

Johnson and Whissel began speaking in January 2024, and not long after Johnson injured his shoulder the following month on Feb. 28, they set up plans for the offseason.

"He's been awesome," Johnson said. "Definitely feel pretty lucky to have met him, and kind of changed my mindset a lot. I think I was working really hard, but not really working the smartest before. I think he's really helped me work smarter."

Whissel said his focus was helping Johnson replicate things that would best help his game on the ice rather than just focus on strength gains.

"I feel like with younger players ... they hear so often, ‘You need to get bigger, you need to get stronger,’ and Kent had spent a lot of time in previous years trying to chase that goal," Whissel said. "It may have compromised other areas, like speed or being able to maintain some of his movement ability. So I think for us, it was kind of looking more at what's going to have the greatest impact on his game on the ice. He has incredible vision. He's a shifty player. He's going to benefit far more from accelerating better, changing direction quicker, improving his base of support so he's strong around pucks, things like that.

"Just kind of being a little bit more intentional than just putting him in the gym and saying, ‘Lift heavy and get bigger.’ I think that was kind of the biggest thing: healthy and fast and then stronger on pucks."

The training regimen Whissel developed included more of a focus on movement quality, including body positioning and ground contact points during movements, with the goal of increasing Johnson's speed and acceleration.

Whissel subscribes to a quality-over-quantity plan, which he acknowledges can take some getting used to.

"I think there's that initial anxiety just with, it's far less than what he's done," Whissel said. "So I think it's just, ‘I don't want to be underprepared when I show up [for training camp].’

"We tracked a lot of metrics over the summer. We tracked his sprint times, his jumps, so he had objective feedback, kind of validating that he was getting faster and able to express more power. ... To kind of handle his [shoulder] rehab and that in the same summer, I think the shoulder actually may have helped make doing less more feasible for him, just because he had some limitations for the upper body, and it kind of lent itself perfectly to switching his approach to a more holistic and less-is-more kind of attack for it."

The result has been an uptick not just in performance, but in confidence on the ice.

"The way we train in the gym is a bit more athletic," Johnson said. "We're still doing strength exercises and all that, getting stronger, but I think we're getting stronger in a way that actually you're going to get more balanced and not just getting stronger at an exercise in the gym that I'm not translating to the ice, which is what I kind of felt in seasons before. So, yeah, it's been great."

Teammates certainly have noticed a difference as well.

"You see a confident player," Kuraly said. "He knows he's got the talent, he knows he's got the skill and now he's healthy and he's fast and he's strong.

"I think it's pretty simple. You see a guy that knows he's a good player and now he's on the ice, and the more he's on the ice, the more he's out there and healthy, he's going to keep doing those things."

NHL.com independent correspondent Craig Merz contributed to this report