Portland’s own junior ice hockey team, the Winterhawks, commemorate their 50th anniversary playing on the ice this season. With over 15 divisional championships, 13 conference titles and more than 135 alumni moving up to the National Hockey League, the team is the second-oldest professional team in Portland after the Trailblazers — and one of the best teams in the Western Hockey League’s U.S. Western Conference. Mike Johnston is the general manager of the team. Griffin Darby plays defense for the team. They both join to talk about how they’re celebrating the team’s anniversary and their hopes for the future of the team.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland Winterhawks, the city’s junior ice hockey team, are celebrating their 50th season this coming year with over 15 divisional championships, 13 conference titles and more than 135 alumni who made the leap to the NHL. The team is the second-oldest professional team in Portland after the Trailblazers, and one of the best teams in the Western Hockey League’s U.S. Division. Their first-round playoff series against the Prince George Cougars starts this Friday.
I’m joined now by two members of the team. Mike Johnston is a longtime coach who is now the general manager of the Hawks. Sixteen-year-old Griffin Darby plays defense for the team. It’s good to have both of you on Think Out Loud.
Mike Johnston: Thank you for having us.
Griffin Darby: Yeah, thanks.
Miller: Mike, first – I think we should start with the basics, since the model of the Winterhawks is pretty different from teams like the Blazers, the Timbers or the Thorns. What does it mean to be a junior hockey team in this league?
Johnston: It’s very unique in all sports, actually, because if you look at the U.S. model, most players, whether they’re basketball, football, they move up through high school and then they go on to college. In our program here, we draft players at 14, turning 15. They come to our league at 16, so they move away from home. They come to Portland. They live with a billet family. They go to Sunset High School.
Miller: When you say a “billet” family, that’s a phrase that hockey folks know, but other folks don’t. It’s almost like a military term, but it’s just a family or a bunch of families on the west side, who put kids up in their homes, give them meals and give them a bedroom, and they live with these families.
Johnston: They take care of them for their three or four years that they’re in Portland. Our billet coordinator searches the city for homes that want to take in young players like Griffin, then we match the player with the family, and they stay with them, as I said, usually through their three or four years that they’re in Portland with the Winterhawks. So, it’s a big leap of faith for young kids to move away from home, and for their parents to support that at 16 years of age, ‘til they’re 20, to try and become a professional hockey player.
Miller: And Griffin, are you getting paid in this time, or no?
Darby: Yeah, the league has a salary for us players and gas money, too, but all of our living expenses are covered with our billet homes.
Miller: Was this always your dream to … I mean, you’re Canadian originally, from a small town in Saskatchewan. Was it always your dream to play for a team like the Winterhawks on your way to, say, the NHL?
Darby: Yeah, growing up in Swift Current, they have their own team in our league, the Broncos. So, growing up watching them, and obviously, family that played in the league before, it was something me and my brother have always wanted to do growing up.
Miller: I looked, there’s something like 16 or 17 thousand people in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and something like 600,000 in Portland. What was it like when you got here as a 15-year-old, turning 16?
Darby: It was a big change. I mean, just the drives everywhere, being an extra half an hour. And I’m not really used to the big city, but I think having the support systems that Portland does, like the billet families, and being with the guys that are doing it for their first time, too, it makes it a lot easier.
Miller: Am I right that your older brother, two years older, he’s also on the Hawks? He’s been here for a little while.
Darby: Yeah.
Miller: Is he in the same family?
Darby: Yeah, we are.
Miller: So that must make it a little bit easier. You’re living with strangers at first, but your brother’s there as well?
Darby: Yeah, he lived there last year too, so he’s already comfortable with them, so they all just welcomed me into their home.
Miller: On the website, I was struck by this – I’m sure there are many more details that families have to pass to make sure that it’s a safe, good place and a supportive place – it does say, at the very beginning, they have to provide two nutritious meals to their players. Do you have favorite meals that your billet family makes?
Darby: Oh yeah, my billet mom’s a really good cook. She makes a really good pregame pasta before games, and then she makes some good chicken and rice, just a classic, she makes those good.
Miller: Mike, this is part of the Canadian Hockey League, the Western Hockey League part of that – are these teams totally independent from NHL teams?
Johnston: Yes, they are. At one time they weren’t, at one time they were aligned with NHL teams, way back. But the Canadian Hockey League has teams in Quebec, Ontario, and then the Western Hockey League. So there’s three different leagues. We’re part of the Western Hockey League, 22 teams. Six of them are in the U.S. Division. And we play in our conference with the BC Division, so we make up the Western side of our conference.
Miller: And the hope for most players is that they’ll pick up the skills, get better, then be seen by NHL scouts and go to the big time?
Johnston: And get drafted. Our players are looking to get drafted at 17 years of age. That’s when the NHL has their draft, they can also be drafted at 18 or 19, but that’s certainly their goal. The one thing we do though, for players, which is important for people to know, is that we protect them, and you can imagine if you’re sending your son away, and he wants to become a professional … that’s great, but what else is he doing?
So we have one of the top educational programs. Sue Johnson takes care of our players, high school players like Griffin, making sure they’re in Sunset, they’re in the right courses and that they’re graduating, so that they can take college courses.
And what happens at Memorial Coliseum every day is we have college professors in there with the players that have graduated from high school. And if they do not make pro hockey, we give them educational money to use, if they don’t make pro, to go on and finish their educational degree.
Miller: Griffin, how much time … and what’s an average day like for you?
Darby: Average day during the week is, wake up for school, go to the morning, you go for about like three hours, and that’s two classes.
Miller: In person, at Sunset High School in Beaverton?
Darby: Yeah.
Miller: So you and a bunch of other, often Canadian boys, before you play hockey, you go to Sunset and are an American high school student for a couple hours. OK, and then what?
Darby: We go there and do our classes, and then we head to the rink, which is about a 20-minute drive, and then hop on the ice, go practice, and then after, we work out. That’s kind of our day. It’s a lot different from the college guys, which I mean, it’s pretty much the same, they go to college and then do the stuff after too.
Miller: Does hockey feel the same? I mean, you’re in a different country, you’re not living with your biological family, different school, but when you get out on the ice, does that feel like home?
Darby: Yeah, it does … kind of anywhere on the ice feels like it’s a part of me, almost like something I know. So it’s really nice to come back to it every day and get on the ice.
Miller: Mike, you were a coach for thirteen years, over 500 wins – correct me if any of these numbers are wrong, I think I saw this on the website – five WHL finals appearances, one championship. And then, recently, last year, you decided to stop coaching. Obviously, you’re still a major part of this team, the general manager. Was it hard to stop coaching?
Johnston: Well, I started coaching when I was 23, so I’ve been a lifetime coach at a lot of different levels. So it is tough to step back, but the one thing we have is Kyle Gustafson. He was here when I came to Portland. He was a young guy just trying to work his way through and see if he could become part of the Winterhawks organization.
We eventually moved him up to an assistant coach. He had been with me for a long time, had one year in the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks as an assistant, came back and I knew he was ready to coach, so it made it a lot easier, that we had somebody in house that had been part of our program.
So we’re really in sync and we talk every day about what’s happening, but a big priority for us with the NCAA landscape changing, where our players now can go to NCAA schools, they’re not considered professional. So our recruiting identification of players has to expand. It was a good opportunity for me to step back, take a look at how we can retool our group as we move forward, and add some more really good young players like Griffin to our lineup for next year and the year after. So that gave me the focus, but I still miss coaching, obviously, yeah.
Miller: This is a change in NCAA rules that, I don’t think we’ve talked about on this show, but it’s happened at the same time there have been so many changes: name, image, likeness changes, where now collegiate players can make money, as opposed to simply their schools, off of their athletic accomplishments. But what you’re talking about, it seems like a really big difference for your league.
It used to be that schools would consider these young players professionals because they got a little bit of money as part of playing here. Now, they can spend a couple of years at a place like the Winterhawks or Everett or wherever else, and then go on to play hockey in college. How does that change recruiting? How does that change a player’s way of thinking about this team?
Johnston: Well, when we identified good players in the past, I would go meet with the player and their parents, and I would say “We would love to have your son in Portland. He’s 15, turning 16, he’s gonna be a great player, but the one thing you have to know is that if he decides to come to Portland, he cannot go to NCAA schools,” because we pay them a $250-a-month stipend to cover some expenses – that’s all they get.
Miller: That’s $250 a month and that, in the eyes of colleges in the U.S., bumped these players from being amateurs to being professional.
Johnston: That’s what they considered, and then there was a court ruling on it, in November. And at that time, they said that players in the Canadian Hockey League are not professionals, so they can go to NCAA schools, and players in NCAA schools could come to our league and go back to the school as well. So it really opened up the landscape for players, which I think is great because I never liked the conversation with a parent to have to say, “You realize you have to make a choice between us or NCAA schools.”
Miller: I imagine that would be a huge decision, both because it’s possible the NCAA’s could be a way to get to the NHL, but also, I imagine that hockey is like every other professional sport where so few are drafted that it seems scary to put all your eggs in this professional hockey basket because there’s a lot of life ahead of you.
Griffin, what are your thoughts about how you navigate the future? You’re only 16, but there’s some big decisions in the coming years.
Darby: Yeah, for sure. And that’s been the talk of the league at the start of the year, this new rule coming in. But right now, my thoughts are just play it by day. You know, just get better every day, and whatever path opens up for me, to try and make it to the NHL, try and make it professionally. I think I’ll just pursue the best way possible for me.
Miller: Mike, you’ve said in the past that in addition to assembling a championship team, it is your job as general manager to prepare your young players for professional hockey and life after hockey. How do you prepare these young players for the pros and is that at all different from assembling a winning team right now?
Johnston: I think it goes hand-in-hand, for sure. The big challenge nowadays, I find with young athletes, is there’s a lot of voices around them. They have parents, obviously, agents, coaches, skills coaches – but the voice on social media is pretty intense, where they have to navigate everything around them and try and focus on, as Griffin’s talking about, “I need to focus on how can I become a better player, what can I do today to become a better player?” And we try to help our players navigate that.
Griffin’s gonna go, in the following year, two years into his draft year. So a lot of rankings are gonna come out, and they’re gonna say, “This player’s ready,” or “He’s not ready.” There’s a lot of scrutiny. And I feel for the players, because not only are they moving away from home to a different country, but they’re having to handle the day-to-day challenges of pressure and adversity. So we try to really protect them, but we also try to help them because this is a life skill to be able to navigate in the future.
Miller: Griffin, how do you handle that? I mean, if this is a very public thing too, if those rankings that are going to come out in the coming years, have you near the top, or in the middle, or in the bottom – how do you mentally prepare for that?
Darby: There’s a lot of noise and a lot of people telling you different stuff, but I feel like there’s always a way, through hard work and just putting in time. I feel like somebody’s going to notice that, and just try not to listen to what the rankings have to say, just be with your team, focus on winning with your team. And when you win, people are gonna notice you. So just trying to help my team win is probably gonna be the thing that I’m gonna do.
Miller: What have you learned from some of the older players? And I say “older” in quotes because if they’re 19 or 20, they’re still, in my mind, and probably in the minds of a lot of our listeners, young men. But what have you learned from them?
Darby: Kyle and Ryder have obviously been here since they were my age.
Miller: Who are Kyle and Ryder, for the non-Superhawks fans out there?
Darby: Kyle Chyzowski, he’s from BC. He’s the captain for the Winterhawks. Ryder Thompson is from Manitoba and he’s the assistant captain.
Miller: Is Kyle the leading scorer this year?
Darby: Yeah, he is.
Miller: In the games I went to this year, my first ones, which were super fun, I should say, he scored in each one.
Darby: Yeah, he’s got over 100 points this year, which is really impressive. And then another older guy is Tyson Jugnauth from BC.
Miller: I’m curious about what you’re learning from them that is both hockey-related or on-the-ice skills, and then life skills.
Darby: Yeah, on-the-ice skills, I take so much after them. Ryder is such a good player. Him and Tyson are both D-men …
Miller: They play defense …
Darby: Yeah, so I look up to them on the ice. I take little bits out of their game, and I like to watch them, for sure.
And off the ice, they’re just so mature and they handle situations really well, whether it’s playing this many minutes a night in big games – obviously last year in the finals for the WHL – and then, the people they are, just like how they prepare, I think is a big one for me. Before games, before practices, they’re always so dialed in, and it’s just a routine for them now. So that’s how I look up to them.
Miller: Have you gotten media training? Have you gotten specific instructions for how to handle a situation like you’re in right now, talking to some person on a mic?
Darby: I’ve done it a couple times throughout the last couple of years.
Miller: What are the lessons you’ve been given for how to talk to people like me?
Darby: Answer the questions with how I feel, yeah …
Miller: That’s better than I would have thought a professional organization would give. I mean, I would have thought it’s, “Don’t answer the question if you don’t want to. Figure out a way to not answer it in a way that doesn’t seem like you’re not answering it.” And certainly, I have talked to CEOs who clearly have gotten that training. You don’t sound like that, which is great, but I do wonder … Mike, this is maybe for you, to what extent the training that you give has to be about way more than just ice hockey.
Johnston: Well, it is for sure, and as you talk about the media training, one of the college courses we’ve had over the years – and each player will take it as they get into the college courses – is media training and presenting, because a lot of these players, they’ll go to functions and have to present in front of a room. They have to talk to a large group. It’s not only how you say it, and what you say. I think at the professional level, they are really careful. But I want our kids to be kids. The kids, that’s what makes them exciting and fun. And from a fan’s perspective, they really grab on to young guys because they see their personality. We want their personality to come out.
One thing I just want to add to what Griffin said about our leadership group is, I think the foundation of our success has been around our leadership in the room. We’ve had kids that have stayed with us from 16 to 20. And they’ve been our guys. Some other teams will trade players around and move players. We keep our players because we know it’s gonna be important – what they learned at 16, how they pass it on at 20 to those younger guys. Griffin’s gonna be a leader in a few years, so he’s looking up to Chyzowski, Jugnauth and Thompson. And how they behave, how they act, how they implement everything for these young kids, I think is critical to our success.
Miller: Am I right in assuming that you had opportunities to have some role at the NHL? If you’d wanted to, you could have had a career there, instead of junior hockey?
Johnston: Well, I coached college hockey in Canada when I came up through, and then I coached with Team Canada and several international events. And then I went to the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks as an associate coach, Los Angeles. At that time, I didn’t get a head coaching job, so a guy approached me who was gonna buy the Portland Winterhawks in 2009, to see if I wanted to be the GM/coach at junior level. I’d never done it before, but since I’ve been at the junior level, I think as a coach and general manager, you can impact these kids way more than you can impact pros. I love the pro game. I love the NHL. It was great, but at this level you can have much more of an impact.
Miller: And if given a different opportunity now, you would stay with junior hockey, you would stay as you see the kids?
Johnston: For sure. I really enjoy it. I think, as I said, when you take young guys away from home at 16, and now we see guys playing in the NHL or we have … One of our graduates eight years ago is a plastic surgeon in Calgary. You see things like that and you’re just so proud of them. They’re like your kids, you’re so proud of them.
Miller: The team was third in the Division this season, 5th seed in the Western Conference for the playoffs, which, as I mentioned, are going to start in just a couple of days, on Friday night in BC. Griffin, how are you feeling right now as you head towards the playoffs?
Darby: I’m really excited. It’s my first experience of the WHL playoffs, so it’s obviously a big step, but I’m really excited.
Miller: Griffin Darby and Mike Johnston, congratulations and thanks so much.
Darby: Thank you.
Johnston: Thanks for having us.
Miller: Griffin Darby is a 16-year-old defender for the Portland Winterhawks. Mike Johnston is the general manager of the team.
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