Wild sign defenseman Jack Johnson to professional tryout
The Minnesota Wild have signed veteran defenseman Jack Johnson to a professional tryout agreement (PTO), the club announced Monday afternoon.
Johnson, 38, skated in 41 games with the Columbus Blue Jackets during the 2024-25 regular season, collecting six assists while averaging 12:52 of ice time per night.
A veteran of 1,228 games over nearly two decades in the NHL, Johnson won the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022. If he makes the team, he’ll be tasked with providing veteran leadership on a relatively young Wild roster that will be without Jonas Brodin for the start of the 2025-26 season.
We have signed defenseman Jack Johnson to a professional tryout.
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A first-round pick (No. 3 overall) of the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2005 NHL Draft, Johnson spent his first two post-draft seasons at the University of Michigan.
Early in his second year with the Wolverines, Johnson was included in a trade with the Los Angeles Kings alongside Oleg Tverdovsky in exchange for Eric Belanger and Tim Gleason. The 6’2″ left-handed defender eventually made his NHL debut with the Kings late in the 2006-07 season.
Johnson averaged more than 20 minutes per night in each of his five seasons with the Kings but was traded to Columbus late in the 2011-12 campaign as part of the package for an unhappy Jeff Carter, who ended up winning the Stanley Cup later that year (and again two seasons later). The Blue Jackets also received a 2013 first-round pick in the deal, which they used to select Marko Dano.
While he never matched Carter’s contributions in L.A., Johnson established himself as a valuable player in his own right with the Blue Jackets, consistently logging a ton of minutes and recording his second 40-point season in 2014-15. He ultimately left Columbus as a free agent in 2018 and signed a five-year deal with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Johnson never found his groove in Pittsburgh and was bought out just two years into his big UFA deal. Then, after appearing in just 13 games with the New York Rangers in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, Johnson signed a PTO with Colorado the next fall and managed to parlay that opportunity into a contract — and, after 74 games in the regular season and 13 more in the playoffs, Johnson earned the right to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup as a member of the 2021-22 Avalanche.
Faced with salary and roster constraints, the Avalanche were unable to re-sign Johnson after their championship season, leaving him to sign with the Chicago Blackhawks as a free agent. However, the Avs managed to re-acquire Johnson from Chicago at the 2023 trade deadline and he spent the remainder of that season and the entirety of the 2023-24 campaign back in Colorado.
Through 1,228 career NHL games over parts of 19 seasons with the Kings, Blue Jackets, Penguins, Rangers, Avalanche, and Blackhawks, Johnson has collected 77 goals and 342 points. The Indianapolis product has added five goals and 21 points in 57 playoff contests with L.A., Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Colorado.