Dale Hunter and Jim Johnson were once teammates with the Capitals. It was only for parts of three seasons. Hunter, after all, was the face of the franchise for most of the 1990s and Johnson was a journeyman defenseman who would go on to play for five teams during a 13-year NHL career. But they formed a friendship here that has lasted through the years even as hockey has taken them to different locales throughout North America and Europe.
“He’s a student of the game,” Hunter said of Johnson, whom he hired Tuesday to become the Capitals’ newest assistant coach. “When we were playing together we used to talk a lot of hockey. Some guys are just watching the game. We were talking the game together.”
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Johnson was back in Arizona, where he had recently sold his home in Scottsdale. He says he began the season coaching for HC Lugano in Switzerland’s National League A under former Red Wings assistant Barry Smith, who quit that club in late October. Johnson had hoped to return to Switzerland again before he got a call from Hunter on Monday. Johnson spoke with general manager George McPhee Tuesday afternoon and had the contract details worked out by the end of the day. Johnson hopped a red-eye flight from Phoenix in time to join the Caps for Wednesday’s practice. Quite the whirlwind. Johnson didn’t even have his own skates because his equipment bags didn’t make it. He was sporting a pair of ill-fitting size 12s, instead.
The two men have kept in touch through the years. Hunter retired, spent one year as director of player development with Washington and then a decade as the co-owner/head coach of the OHL’s London Knights. Johnson was an interim assistant coach with the Phoenix Coyotes in 1999-2000. He then spent three years as an assistant coach with the United States World Juniors team from 2000 to 2002. He remained with USA Hockey on a volunteer basis and began coaching his son, Derik, at the youth hockey level in Arizona.
Derik Johnson was once a teammate of current Caps defenseman John Carlson on the U.S. under-17 national team, spent three seasons with the Penticton Vees of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League and is now a freshman hockey player at the University of Minnesota-Duluth – his father’s alma mater. Current Washington prospect Caleb Hebert, a fifth-round draft pick in 2010 who we saw at rookie camp this summer, is himself a freshman and that team’s fourth-leading scorer. Minnesota-Duluth is ranked fifth in the nation by the web site Inside College Hockey.
While in Arizona in 2006, Jim Johnson founded the under-18 P.F. Chang’s Tier I hockey program in suburban Phoenix and served as its director and coach. The Tampa Bay Lightning then gave Johnson a job as its development coach for the 2008-09 season. That led to a wild season in 2009-10 when Johnson began the year as associate head coach at AHL affiliate Norfolk. The Lightning fired AHL head coach Darren Rumble on Jan. 16, 2010 and promoted Johnson. He led the Admirals to a 13-2-2 record and its penalty kill (86.9 percent) ranked third in the AHL. But on Feb. 24 the organization switched Johnson’s role with NHL assistant Wes Walz, who was promptly fired when he refused to report to Norfolk, according to a story by Damien Cristodero in the St. Petersburg Times,
Looking to improve his NHL team’s penalty kill, Tampa Bay general manager Brian Lawton promoted Johnson without consulting his coaching staff. That led to friction with coach Rick Tocchet. With four games left in the regular season, Johnson returned to Norfolk to help with a late playoff push. His final record that season in the AHL was 15-5-0-2 – though the Admirals ultimately missed the postseason.
After a year away from the pro level, Johnson reconnected with Hunter at last June’s NHL draft in Minneapolis. The two men spent several hours chatting about what Johnson had done to help turn around AHL Norfolk. That planted the seed. When Hunter’s opportunity came to coach an NHL team, Johnson, too, earned another shot.
“I showed [Hunter] some ideas what I was doing when I took over in Norfolk,” Johnson said. “And showed him some statistics that I worked on and my development and how I went in there to turn that team around in a very short period of time. We have a lot of the same philosophies and ideas.”
So Johnson’s knowledge of coaching is steeped in player development. But he was always on the lookout for bigger opportunities. He left his wife, Jody, and daughter, Mia, back in Scottsdale to take the organizational position with Tampa Bay. He did the same for three months this year to work in Switzerland.
“I stepped back from coaching in the National Hockey League when I was an interim coach in Phoenix,” Johnson said. “When I took that step back, I wanted to learn how to be a better teacher and understand how to articulate with the kids today. I think that’s when I really learned to become a coach when I went back and coached 18-year-olds and 16-year-olds and then took it into the American Hockey League level. I don’t think it’s really a lot of difference coaching at that level and this level.”
Johnson articulated his philosophy on the blueline – and therefore Hunter’s, too.
“I’m a real pressure guy. I don’t think you win at this game without pressuring. And I’m a guy that really believes you’ve got to play a 200-foot game and it’s a speed game today. And it’s not only your forecheck speed, it’s your backcheck speed, it’s your skating speed, it’s your transition speed and it’s your intellectual speed. I think if you can play a speed game, you can have success. But you’ve got to have some structure within that speed game. That’s, I think, what Dale’s really trying to implement here is give these guys some structure when we don’t have the puck because we know what kind of skill we have when we have the puck. It’s getting it back as soon as we can and spending less time in our own end.”
So don’t expect to see Washington’s defensemen hanging back in the play much. Hunter and Johnson want their defensemen to help create offense. That shouldn’t be difficult if Mike Green returns healthy and rejoins skilled blueliners like Carlson and Dennis Wideman. Johnson said he likes “to teach positively” with emphasis on video clips. But he also admits there will be a learning curve as he gets to know the Caps’ defensemen and how they like to learn.
Added Hunter: “He knows what I’m trying to do so it’ll be easier, systems. Head coaches think that they know everything. I can say that he knows more about “D” than me because he played it. It’s like, I know forwards better than I do “D” because that was my position when I played. And to add a “D” that’s played that many games and is a student of the game will help our team a lot.”
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