Canucks: Give Ryan Johnson his due credit for Abbotsford's Calder Cup triumph
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Johnson's Abbotsford Canucks squad was dealing with a serious COVID outbreak and Boudreau asked about how much he was paying attention to what was going on with the AHL team, and was empathic about how much he viewed the minor leaguers as important members of the organization as a whole.
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Johnson had been running the Canucks' minor league affiliate since 2017, when then-Canucks GM Jim Benning put him charge of the Utica Comets, what was supposed to be a key development cog in the system. The team then was in Utica, N.Y., and moved to Abbotsford in 2021.
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In Utica, Johnson toiled away, doing everything he could for his charges, finding players in the ECHL to plug the gaps when needed, never once complaining about what the job entailed.
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Utica's development record was mixed in those years, as much because Benning rushed the organization's prospects to the NHL as anything, but Johnson earned a reputation as a worker. A guy who made a difference with the people he worked with. Who had the backs of those who worked around him.
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The broader recognition, though, was rare. Utica's lineups tended to be young. There wasn't always a lot of success. At times you would wonder if the 'draft and development' credo that Benning had long espoused was a little forgotten by those at the top.
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So when he replied to what I'd said about Boudreau's praise for the AHL squad, Johnson's choice of words said everything.
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'It's nice to be recognized,' he said, after a pause. It was, you knew, a heartfelt response from a guy who you knew perhaps wasn't used to hearing feedback of any kind.
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Running the AHL squad can be a thankless task, especially when you are thousands of kilometres away from the big club. Think of how difficult the 2020-21 season was, for instance: that was the final season in Utica and he was practically marooned on an island, running a team that was on the other side of a very tightly-controlled border. We were deep into the pandemic, not yet in a universe with vaccines. Crossing the border meant a quarantine. That meant that players and staff sent to upstate New York were almost certainly being sent there for the season.
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On top of the public health hurdles, Canucks ownership had dialled back heavy on the hockey operations budget, which meant there wasn't any money to be spent on AHL veterans to fill out the Comets' roster. Instead Canucks AGM Chris Gear, who helped Johnson run Utica, struck a deal with the St. Louis Blues to share the affiliate. Both teams supplied players and staff.
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