Mike Johnston and Tim Hunter: Polar opposites in coaching interviews

So, if I do take the time to ask a visiting coach a few questions for use on my broadcast, the conversation typically doesn’t focus on their team, but instead on specific issues that reach a wider audience. In other words, I want that coach to have an opinion on how he conducts business, or how he views the game. I want to dig deeper.

Sometimes I succeed. Other times I fail. The objective is to squeeze something out of the hockey mind that is remotely interesting to a broad audience.

A case in point on failure was a few years ago when the Kelowna Rockets visited the Moose Jaw Warriors in a rare meeting between the two teams. It was a cold Tuesday night in the ‘Band City’ and Tim Hunter was the head coach of the Warriors at the time. I thought a good interview with him, pre-game, could focus on his days in the NHL as a rough and tumble tough guy. Heck, I wasn’t about to request an interview with someone who I had seen tangle with some of the toughest players around, by not talking about the scars on his famous hockey nose.

Arranging to interview Hunter was a task in itself, and I honestly braced myself for the hard ass approach. After waiting patiently, Hunter finally appeared from the Warriors dressing room looking about as excited to see me as I expected. I tried to chat him up with small talk, but I knew it was going to be a grind. I asked him a softball question about his team, which again I could care less about and would delete upon editing, and then attempted to get into the meat of the conversation with some dialogue pertaining to the ‘Battle of Alberta’.

I would like to think I caught Hunter on a bad day, but he wasn’t biting. He gave me vague, short answers with no meat on the bone. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, with my questions longer than his answers, it was best to call it a day and walk away from the situation none the wiser.

All this to say, I speak regularly to Portland Winterhawks GM and Head Coach Mike Johnston every chance I get. Kevin Constantine too. Why? In my opinion, Johnston is smart as a whip and tries to have a conversation with me. He is willing to play in the sandbox for a little while. He is a pro. I am intrigued by how he sees the game, and generally, the 66-year-old offers up great comments for my listeners.

Plus, he knows my name, so he tries to be personable.

Here is an example of the conversation I had with Johnston last night:

Question: The Winterhawks have won 40 or more games in 6 consecutive seasons, can you do it again this year?

Johnston: “I like our group,” Johnston said without hesitation. “Last year we didn’t do much at the trade deadline. We felt heading into this season we wanted to keep our veteran group together, so we weren’t willing to make moves to make sure this year that we have three real good 20-year-olds, guys that have been in our lineup since day one.”

Question: Would you like to see a change in the WHL start date, considering so many junior players were at NHL training camps and couldn’t ice highly competitive teams?

Johnston: “Some teams are missing one of two players while others are missing five or six,” Johnston offered. “It really puts a dent in your lineup. We will have that at world junior tournament time, but early in the season, I always felt it was good to give the guys a week at NHL camps, so I would like to see our league start a week after NHL camps open.”

Question: Connor Bedard will play in the NHL this season. You’ve seen him play in the WHL. Will he have a good season as a rookie?

Johnston: “There is a lot of pressure on him,” Johnston said. “I really feel the telltale sign for him was when he played at the world juniors. I just thought he dominated that tournament. For a draft-eligible player to dominate the way he did, both in consistency and big moments, that proved to me he will be able to make the adjustment for sure. He looks energized, and it will be tough, but he has a special skill set.”

Question. I don’t want you to comment on the Mike Babcock situation, but how have you evolved as a veteran coach?

Johnston: “I think like anything else, it is important to evolve and what is happening in your profession and how you can improve and get better,” Johnston said. “And certainly, over the years as you age, you want to stay current. What are the proper ways to run meetings? Nowadays it is much more different than what we did 10 or 12 years ago when we used to have long meetings. Now we have short, energetic meetings. We have a lot of one-on-one or a lot of small groups.

“The other part is how you treat the player. As you’ve seen over the years, coaching has evolved into more explanation of why we need you to do things, and its more of a partnership with you and the player. You are trying to get the most out of the player, but they need buy-in too to get the most out of them.”

Question: Do you start a season envision a system that you try to implement and then you change because it isn’t working as well as you had hoped?

Johnston: “We try and play the way we want to play at the end of the year,” Johnston again providing a well thought out answer. “Things may not look pretty at the beginning of the year, but we know where we are trying to get to. We know where we want to go. Because we are short staffed with six guys out of the lineup, we aren’t going to adjust and say, even though we are puck possession team, but to survive, we are going to dump [the puck] it in every time we have it. We are not going to resort to that. We are going to try to convince the young guys to continue to play the way we want them to play in order for us to have the long game.”

Question: Is it fun to have Kevin Constantine back as a foe, matching wits behind a WHL bench?

Johnston: “Kevin is a really strategy coach,” Johnston said accurately. “You always have to know he will always have an edge on what he is doing as far as faceoff plays, strategy at beginning and end of games. How they are going to trap and how they are going to transition. Once you know what he is going to do, it is a little bit easier, but you still have to beat him.”

How about that for insightful comments from a opposition coach?

Mike Johnston delivers.

Case closed.

by Regan Bartel

Mike Johnston and Tim Hunter: Polar opposites in coaching interviews

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