Following on from MHH's stellar Johnson coverage and ongoing questions concerning how good he is going to be, I decided to take a different approach to evaluating Erik Johnson. Namely, by literally comparing Johnsons with Johnsons so to speak.

Thanks to hockeydb, we can see that there have been 479 recorded Johnsons that have some form of league hockey. Of these, only 25 have have penetrated the NHL:

If we eliminate the forwards that have lower PPG averages than Erik Johnson (0.45) and players with less games than Erik Johnson (238) - we are left with 8 Johnsons: Mssrs Erik, Brent, Ivan "Ching", Jack, Jim, Mark, Terry and Tom Johnson.

Out of these 8 Johnson's, Mark Johnson is the currently the Best Johnson (with Olympic Gold with the US Miracle on Ice Team, and a decent (0.8 PPG average)).

After this, it is largely up for grabs - with Brent, Jack and Erik probably battling for 2nd best Johnson. Arguably, Erik Johnson has the early edge on Jack Johnson with a higher PPG average (0.45 v 0.36) and Brent Johnson (who only was the clear starting goalie with the 2000-01 Blues, other than this he has been tandeming with another goalie or backing-up). 

But, if we were to look at Mark Johnson's 23-year-old season, Erik Johnson is clearly miles in front of Mark - as Mark only had 42 points in 90 games (or 0.47 PPG).

Based on this we can say that Erik Johnson's achievements are better than 99% of other Johnson's and that only time and experience is standing in the way of Erik Johnson being the best Johnson ever.