By Matt Skoufalos
Like many kids growing up in Minnesota, Zach Johnson was out on the ice, learning to skate, not long after he could walk. He grew up on frozen ponds and outdoor rinks, shooting pucks around the unfinished basement of his parents’ home in Rogers, and playing one-on-one with his dad. At three, he started playing Mini Mites hockey in Elk River; then moved up to Squirts and Pee Wees after the family moved to Saint Michael. By the time Johnson was approaching his 13th birthday, he was an eighth-grader, about 5-feet-eight-inches tall and 165 pounds. Saint Michael added him to its varsity hockey team, where Johnson lettered through 10th grade.
Although every young hockey player dreams of someday playing in the National Hockey League, in Minnesota, their first dream is to compete in the state high school hockey championship tournament. When Johnson moved from Saint Michael to Mound, it felt closer than ever.
“It’s always the dream; the thing you idolize, you go do,” Johnson said. “You take a week off of school. You’re downtown at the Xcel Energy Center, watching the state tournament, eating junk food, and going to Tom Reid’s [Hockey City Pub]. You’re running around Eagle Street; it’s something you look forward to, whether you’re in it or not.”
Johnson’s team at Saint Michael was “OK,” he said, but too small to be competitive. At Mound Westonka High School, the team lost in the semifinal qualifiers of his junior year, and then again to a team from Breck School during his senior year at a time when private academies were creating super-teams comprised of young transfer players. Those schools boasted deeper benches and the ability to roll three or four lines; at Mound, Johnson and his linemates were on the ice for most of the game, pivoting between forward and defense positions.
“You maybe take a minute breather, and you’re back out,” Johnson recalled. “You had to be in tip-top shape. But if you get me on the ice, I don’t want to come off if I don’t have to. I pretty much played year-round.”
In the summer, Johnson had begun playing with a Triple-A youth development team called the Minnesota Thunder; from there, he went to another, even more influential developmental club called the Minnesota Lightning. When he wasn’t skating with his school teams, Johnson was on the ice two to three nights a week, practicing, and traveling every weekend for tournaments.
“My coaches taught us to battle and compete,” he said. “I don’t think we lost a game that summer. A group of guys from all over Minnesota; one of them’s still playing in the show: Nick Jensen, a pretty stellar defenseman for the Washington Capitals. Jake Gardiner, Nic Dowd; those summer-league teams were always going.”
“I thank my parents every day, because you look at how much that game costs, and the tournaments we were always traveling to and playing in,” Johnson said. “I really learned the game at that time in my career. That team is one I truly, truly enjoyed, and look back at some of my favorite memories from there, growing up.”
After graduation, Johnson had an opportunity to consider extending his athletic career in a professional hockey league. At 18, he was drafted by the Junior A Texas Tornado, but the club folded. Johnson was invited to play in the Ted Brill Great Eight, a weekend tournament composed of the top 20 players from each high-school conference in Minnesota, created largely as a scouting showcase. After that event, Johnson was invited to play with the Wenatchee Wild, a new Junior A club that was rolling out in the North American Hockey League (NAHL).
“I got a call from Paul Baxter, Ryan McKelvie, and Chris Clark, who were starting a new team called the Wenatchee Wild. Clark and McKelvie were both Mankato Mavericks [from Minnesota State University],” Johnson said. “Paul Baxter had fists like a boxing mitt. He’d fought guys like [Bob] Probert and all the big dogs back in the show; but he was not much bigger than me.”
“I was 5’ 8” and maybe 195,” Johnson recalled. “It was still a rough-and-tough junior league. There wasn’t any limit to fights you could have in a season. Opening day, we were playing the Topeka RoadRunners, and ended the weekend with a bench brawl.”
For an 18-year-old still looking to find his game, the BCHL offered an opportunity for Johnson to play professional hockey until he aged out of the league at 21. Baxter, Clark and McKelvie were bringing the game to a city of 30,000 people who had had no idea what it was, and youngsters like Johnson were instant celebrities.
“You had a $58-million arena, 5,000 fans, and it was packed every night,” Johnson said. “We never paid for meals. You’re signing autographs for kids; people are buying your jersey. It was wild.”
Johnson had been a prolific goal-scorer throughout his youth hockey career, but at Wenatchee, he learned his role would need to evolve. The coach, Baxter, had been an enforcer at the pro level: a role player who does the work of fighting to limit the opposition taking liberties with the star skilled players. He pulled Johnson aside before the season started, and told him about his expectations.
“He said, ‘You got voted captain by your teammates. Here’s what I want you to do. You don’t complain about anything in practice. You go your hardest. And if I tap you on the shoulder in the middle of the game, I want you to find the biggest guy on the other team and beat the hell out of him.’ ”
“You learn to fight for your teammates,” Johnson said. “You bleed for them; whatever it takes. You find a solution, you back your team up. It’s the one thing that’s translated from my life outside of hockey. You’re part of a team? You do whatever you can for that team until you can’t anymore.”
Johnson did as he was asked. He killed penalties, grinded out shifts on the third line, checking against the other team’s top forwards, and, when it came down to it, threw hands with the guys on the other side. Nagging injuries from his high-school career continued to impede his development, however. So when his eligibility for the Junior A league ended, Johnson joined the team at Hamline University, back in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as a 21-year-old freshman. He graduated with a degree in biology, and a roster full of friends he’s still in touch with to this day.
“We were one, no matter what,” Johnson said. “It was one of the best teams to be a part of. We had the best record ever as a Hamline hockey team, won the regular season championship, won the playoffs, and ended up getting beat by the national tournament champions, St. Norbert, in their home barn.”
Wherever he played, Johnson always dove into the organization to make himself more valuable to it. On off-weekends, he’d sign autographs, do interviews, and pay his respects to the people who put me there. After college, Johnson coached women’s hockey, and discovered he might have even been a better coach than he was a player.
The competitive mindset that served him well as an athlete and teammate made him a valued asset to Kings Medical Group of Richfield, Ohio, where he works in national sales. His hockey play is confined mostly to a men’s chapel league on Wednesday nights, or the occasional private lesson.
But to this day, when Lake Minnetonka freezes over, you can find Johnson lacing up his skates, heading out on the glassy surface with his puppy to chase pucks and catch the sunrise. In those quieter moments, though, it’s still so easy for him to recall the memories of the arena pyrotechnics on the ice at Wenatchee; to hear his name called with the rest of the starting lineup; and to feel the roar of the crowd thundering over the goal horn. •
