Keeping His Eye On An Nhl Future Perry Johnson Knows Time Is Running Out On Chance To Make It Big

Perry Johnson is an old man - actually THE old man - in this league.

Less than a month from his 21st birthday, he’s grizzled enough to have played in the old Spokane Coliseum for the Regina Pats.

He remembers Valeri Bure turning him around in the old Boone Street Barn, when Johnson was a 16-year-old rookie and Bure was the leading scorer for the Chiefs.

The Chiefs were different then. They scored a lot. They lost a lot.

Johnson was different, too.

“I played three shifts that game,” he recalled as the Chiefs prepared for tonight’s Western Hockey League game with the Tri-City Americans. “Bure scored on two of them.”

From survival mode in that ‘93-94 season, Johnson has become a Western Hockey League fixture. Barring injury, he’ll wind up tied for 10th on the league’s all-time list of regular-season games played with 345.

“Not exactly a record I was looking to set when I started,” Johnson said. “When I started, what, four and a half years ago, I never thought I’d be in it this long.”

Still quiet, an intelligent player and explosive skater, the former Regina Pats scholastic player of the year was the foundation on which Chiefs GM Tim Speltz and coach Mike Babcock restructured their defense.

When, or if, the injured Kyle Rossiter returns this season from a severe shoulder separation, it can be argued that Spokane is as deep in quality defenseman as anybody in junior hockey, with Johnson, Zenith Komarniski, Rick Berry, Brad Ference and Rossiter pooling their diverse talent.

When Johnson carries the puck out of the Chiefs’ zone, or jumps up in the rush, comparisons to Bryan McCabe come to mind.

When the Chiefs ran off 15 consecutive games with at least one powerplay goal, Johnson at the point was one big reason why.

The hitch is that he’s not a McCabeish 6-foot-something. He’s 5-11. And whereas McCabe - who started the ‘94-95 season as Spokane’s captain prior to launching his NHL career - tops 200 pounds, Johnson goes 175.

Size counts in the NHL, which is why Perry Johnson remains undrafted, unsigned and unsure his career is headed anywhere.

But he remains hopeful.

He disappointed himself in training camp with the Edmonton Oilers in ‘96, but came back with a strong season last year. The NHL didn’t call during the summer, but Johnson has this Memorial Cup season in Spokane to alter opinions of him.

“I went to the Oilers camp with the wrong attitude, feeling a little out of place, that I didn’t belong,” he said.

The stars he idolized as a boy in Edmonton were gone, but it was the same uniform, “the same Oilers symbol,” he said.

Some disappointment and some good came of that debut.

“Being there gave me the opportunity to see that if I improve I could belong,” Johnson said. “A lot of it up there is confidence.”

Consistency, too.

“Perry’s worst game is still a great game,” Chiefs coach Babcock said. “He’s unbelievably skilled. The biggest thing he has to do is find that extra gear every night, every shift. He’ll be a pro if he wants to be.”

“I’m hoping to generate some interest this year,” Johnson said. “It’s frustrating at times. You see guys go (pro) and you sometimes wonder what you’ve got to do to give yourself an opportunity. Not too sure, but as long as Philly doesn’t win the Cup I might be all right.”

He laughs softly - almost as softly as he talks.

The Philadelphia Flyers - their style embodied by Eric Lindros - are physically imposing. Johnson is half-seriously suggesting that a Flyers setback might make some small statement that size isn’t everything.

After 280 regular-season games and 24 in the playoffs in four seasons, Perry Johnson felt at home in Regina. His family was under the impression that Perry was in Regina’s plans in this, his 20-year-old, over-age season.

He was traded two days before the season opener.

That “came from way out in left field,” Johnson said. “We went out early in the playoffs last year. I was hoping to go back and fix things up this year. It didn’t turn out that way.”

Now, he says, he’s happy. But in September …

“It was a shock. I thought about a lot of things at the time, some things I never would have done. But things crossed my mind, yeah.”

Like refusing to report. Like walking away. The trade represented more than a shift in residence. It was a change in systems. A different way. Four times as many bus trips. Leaving a billet in Regina, a lady who took good care of him.

One of the league’s offensive defensemen, Johnson was sent to a club with a tradition of blood-and-guts hockey.

Regina’s style under then-coach Rich Preston was to dump the puck in less, score off the rush more.

“Some people would call it European,” Johnson says.

The Chiefs fire shots on net and wade in. They generate many of their scoring chances that way, pressuring goaltenders to give up easy rebounds. They cycle the puck low. They grind in the corners.

They win.

With the encouragement of his father, Johnson showed up with an open mind, willing to give change a chance.

“A couple of days after I got here, after I talked with the coaches and some of the guys, it seemed this was the best situation for me,” Johnson said.

Babcock eventually installed Johnson as an alternate captain.

It’s not that he had trouble buying into the work-harder approach in Spokane. He’s not debating the advantages of style with his coach when he says the lesson of the recent Olympics may be that hockey in North America is ready for a little European-style finesse.

“Some of that (Olympic) hockey - more passing, more skating - was more fun to watch than what we get from some of the NHL teams,” Johnson said. “I don’t think a game has to be 9-8 to be wide-open. You saw the final (the Russians and the Czechs in the Winter Games). It was 1-0 with lots of chances.

“I don’t know what the NHL will do with that. I grew up watching the Oilers when they were putting goals in the net and points on the board. That was exciting. I’d like to see them get back to that.”

That expressed, Johnson said he’s learned to dismiss what he can’t control. He knows that one of the longest careers in junior hockey will end with a flourish, where it should, playing for a championship.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos (1 color)

MEMO: Cut in Spokane edition.