It's no secret that when things turn sour, Johan Franzen fairly or unfairly takes the brunt of the blame more often than not around here. He's noted to be a very streaky scorer and plays like a man possessed in the postseason but is generally spotted vacationing in Cabo during what would be cold January and February nights in Motown. I'm in the group that tends to get vehement when the Mule seems to not carry his weight, but I wanted to take a look at his stats by month to see if those criticisms are substantiated. What follows is a month-by-month analysis of Franzen's last four years with at least 65 games played (including the current one) to see just how much he does in the dog days of the NHL season.

2007-2008 - Franzen had 27 goals, 11 assists, 38 points and was +12 in 72 games. Not a great statistical year by any means, which may skew things a bit, but from December onward he averaged at least 17 minutes a game so I've decided to include it and just disregard the October and November numbers (although they will be included in the table). The month-by-month breakdown looks like this:

The marginal January and February numbers probably come as no surprise, and the 18-point March nearly doubled his entire output from the other six months combined. I can't ride the Mule too hard for this season, though, because it was the first where he was really starting to become a contributor.

2008-2009 - The Mule's overall line for the next season were a pretty nice improvement from the year before, where he sported 34 goals, 25 assists, 59 points, and was +21 in one less game. The '08-'09 season saw an emerging Franzen and should start to provide a better context of his monthly performances. Here's the numbers:

Better numbers in January and February, but when you see another March where he notched 17 points in 13 games, you wonder how he's unable to get more than 13 points in 21 games in the two months prior.

2009-2010 - This season is a wash, as Franzen missed 55 games due to an ACL tear. I don't think it's unfair to note that he had 3 points in three February games (solid) and 12 in fifteen March contests, however.

2010-2011 - Franzen returned in full for the 2010 season and played 76 games - most since he played 80 in his rookie season. In those games he scored 28 times, had 27 assists, 55 points and was +5. He had a pretty interesting year as far as monthly scoring goes.

This season saw a rather pedestrian March, by Franzen's standards, and an uncharacteristically strong February. If anything, he seemed to be alternating hot and cool with every other month instead of taking off during the middle of the season.

2011-2012 - This season, Franzen's played 66 NHL-mandated regular season matchups and has accumulated the stat line of 24 goals, 26 assists and 50 points while being +24. The season isn't quite done yet, but even without the full March and April numbers I think it's good to include the rest of the games to bulk up his sample sizes. So far, his breakdown looks like this:

Not sure I could really blame anyone for being upset at Franzen this season after seeing his numbers fluctuate since a great November, hitting a relative low with a -2 in February. Of course, a typical strong March coupled with an appearance of the Playoff Mule we've grown to love would go a long way to dissuading the nay-sayers.

Overall - Here's a combined look of his monthly performance these four seasons:

So there may be something to the whole "takes time off" theory after all, or hell, maybe it's just bad, poorly timed low points. Whatever it is, Franzen's been prone to strong starts to seasons before tailing off in January and February, but then more often than not he has managed to re-kindle the fire for the stretch run and the playoffs. His weak April numbers are a bit concerning, but I'm willing to write those off a little bit due to a small sample size.

So, what can we take from this information? I think the hardest thing is doubting whether or not the success will come when playoff time rolls around. What if Franzen can't snap out of it in time? is a question being asked by many, I presume. Of course, there's history to lean on of him completely dominating the summer months to help assuage our fears, but I don't think it's necessarily out of place for people to wonder if it's going to come until it comes.

A troubling stat I did notice is that in the season of Franzen's one poor March ('10-'11), he didn't play well in the playoffs either, going -1 with 3 points in eight games. Streakiness (is that a word?) is a tricky attribute. When it's there, you know, but you've really got no clue if - or when - it's going to show up or not, and for how long it will stay. The best indicator to fans of this is usually how hard a player is working to break out of their funk, and that's probably why Franzen takes a good deal of flak. He just looks as if he's going motions at times, completely uninvolved in any positive plays. The best we can hope for is for our good pal to figure things out in his typical March-Mule-Madness fashion and help lead the Wings on another glorious Stanley Cup run...but the quicker, the better, Johan!