Looks great in jeans, though

Olli Jokinen went the final 13 games of the 08/09 regular season without scoring a goal. He scored twice in the 6-game playoff series against Chicago. And in the first 19 games of this season, he has scored two goals: one was shot from the corner that deflected off Kyle Cumiskey, and one was a dribbler that even Antti Niemi would agree was one of the five worst goals in the league this season. Count 'em up: that's 4 goals in the past 38 games.

He's recording 2.3 shots per game; he averaged 4.2 in his three post-lockout seasons. You notice different things in different games, but on Tuesday against Colorado, his unwillingness to shoot the puck was glaring; he didn't pass up prime scoring chances, but he certainly passed up some open lanes to the net.

Robert Cleave made a good point the other day that, like it or lump it, Jokinen is here for the duration. And I wasn't going to keep banging the Olli Sucks drum, but, this annoyed me:

"I think I have seven or eight times I hit the post so far this year, if half of those would’ve gone in, nobody would be questioning anything," he said following this morning’s skate.

While I appreciate that he's been a bit unlucky, that statement is not true, and I really hope he doesn't think it is. The gap between (A) the expected performance of a $5.5M/yr "#1 centre" (acquired for a steep price) playing next to Jarome Iginla and (B) Jokinen's performance to date this season is a lot wider than that.

Go Flames.