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tl;dr below the stat-headedness. The two biggest knocks on Johan Franzen are his streakiness and perceived laziness. Franzen also currently has the fourth highest salary on the team. While the Red Wings are well below the cap floor - spending money isn't a problem - what, exactly is Franzen's value to the team and what should be done with him? Franzen lead the team with 29 goals, beating fellow whipping-boy Jiri Hudler by 4. His 56 points were good enough for fourth on the team. Franzen essentially paced himself to score a goal once every third game and had .683 ppg. Using this, it is possible to gauge how streaky Johan really is. I am going to break Franzen's season into 2 week segments, examining goals, points, and pace for both, Oct 7-Oct 21 GP G A P GPG PPG 5 4 3 7 65.6 114.8 Oct 22-Nov 6 GP G A P GPG PPG 7 1 2 3 34.1 68.3 All of Franzen's points this week came from one game on November 5th, the last of the week. Nov 7-Nov 21 GP G A P GPG PPG 7 5 5 10 43.1 86.2 Nov 22-Dec 6 GP G A P GPG PPG 7 3 3 6 40.9 81.9 Dec 7-Dec 21 GP G A P GPG PPG 7 1 3 4 34.7 74.4 Dec 22-Jan 5 GP G A P GPG PPG 6 2 1 3 33.6 69.4 Jan 6-Jan 20 GP G A P GPG PPG 8 2 5 7 31.3 69.6 Jan 21-Feb 4 GP G A P GPG PPG 6 1 1 2 29.3 65.0 Feb 5-Feb 19 GP G A P GPG PPG 7 4 1 5 32.4 66.3 Feb 20-Mar 5 GP G A P GPG PPG 6 1 2 3 29.9 62.1 Mar 6-Mar 20 GP G A P GPG PPG 5 2 1 3 29.9 61.2 This is the beginning of the 5 games that Mule missed. Mar 21-Apr 3 GP G A P GPG PPG 3 0 0 0 28.8 58.7 Apr 4-Apr 7 GP G A P GPG PPG 3 3 0 3 30.8 59.6 So is Franzen statistically streaky? Oh yes. If you expect one goal every third game, you would expect to see about 2 goals every two weeks, give or take. Franzen missed that mark (counting 1-3 goals per week) more than 1/3 of the time. If you count scoring one goal in two weeks as poor, as I would, that count rises to more than 1/2 the time. Also telling is the changing rate at which Franzen scored. There was no way Mule would continue the pace he set over the first five games, but discounting that, Franzen's PPG pace varied by around 2.7 per two weeks. That indicates a good deal of instability. tl;dr: Mule is wildly inconsistent. He's only costing about $4M in cap space, but I don't know if I'm comfortable with Franzen being part of the solution moving forward. Thoughts on Johan?