published on June 02, 2024 in celeb

Catching up with Justin Johnson, the man who took down John Scott

It was the last game of a forgettable Islanders season, a win in Buffalo that did nothing for the Islanders but alter the ping-pong ball combinations at the draft lottery.

But April 13, 2014 will always mean something to Justin Johnson. It was his night. His punch. A guy who never thought he’d even make the American League had fought his way, literally and metaphorically, through outposts in the ECHL and AHL to make it to the NHL thanks to a loyal GM and a team playing out the string.

Johnson was a month shy of his 33rd birthday when he got the call. Two NHL games. One fight. And he took down John Scott.

“You win a game at that time of the year, sitting where we were, and it doesn’t do anything for you,” Thomas Hickey said. “For us, back then, what JJ did was more than a win — it was something to feel good about. Everyone felt great to feel that happy for him, and some of those guys knew him for 48 hours. That tells you all you need to know about the guy.”

Scott, after taking a Johnson left hook to the jaw, just laughs in the video clip. In his Players Tribune piece after he retired in 2016, Scott said he lost only one fight cleanly: “Congratulations, Justin Johnson. You caught me with the left hook. What can I say? Good job.”

Maybe it was luck. Johnson and Scott had crossed paths in college, Johnson at the University of Alaska and Scott at Michigan Tech, but there’s no fighting in college hockey. So perhaps Scott didn’t know that Johnson, despite what looks like a one-foot height and reach difference, could deliver with the left hand like that.

But that isn’t it. “People want to say you’re lucky,” Johnson said. “I don’t think I was lucky. I was ready.”

The lesson, really, is in how a 32-year-old black man from Alaska with nothing much beyond modest hockey skills, a willingness to fight and a warm, protective personality ends up knocking down the biggest, baddest fighter in the NHL. That’s the beauty of Johnson’s story.

It was 2010. Johnson was 29 and he had five years logged already in the ECHL, bouncing from his hometown Alaska Aces to to Idaho, Utah, Cincinnati and back to Alaska. He was in Detroit, coaching a youth team from Anchorage at a tournament and getting ready to settle into life as a former pro player, coaching kids and searching for the next act of his career.

“I had the coaching thing all set up, I figured that was where it was headed. And I get a call from (Kings assistant GM) Ron Hextall asking me to come to training camp with (AHL) Manchester,” Johnson said. “I didn’t even call him back right away, I didn’t know what to do. I called Brent Thompson, my coach with Alaska (in 2009-10), and said, ‘What do I do here? Is this legit?’

“He was like, ‘This is the first I’m hearing of it, let me check it out.’ So he calls back and says, ‘Yeah, they want you there right away.’ And God bless Brent Thompson. He’s one of those people in my life — there’s so many of them in hockey — that I just think, ‘None of this happens without him.’”

Johnson spent parts of three seasons in Manchester, keeping the flies off the Kings’ young prospects. One of them was Hickey.

“JJ would just get everyone fired up,” Hickey said. “He wasn’t a crazy, rah-rah type of guy, but he would give everyone a nickname before the game, nothing to poke fun but just to get everyone feeling involved. It was great. Everyone loved playing with him because you could tell it meant so much to him to be there.”

Johnson landed in the Islanders organization for that 2013-14 season, with Thompson coaching in Bridgeport. Johnson joined Brett Gallant as the two heavies on that Sound Tigers team; Gallant was only 24 but making a name for himself as a willing fighter in his third season with the Sound Tigers. Johnson, at 32, was the oldest guy in the room most nights, very accustomed to his role as big brother.

“Whether helping guys slow down a bit off the ice, speeding up a bit on the ice, recognizing how they can stick and get to the next level, that’s a whole other education and I got to be part of that for some guys,” Johnson said. “I feel like I got a chance to help people and it wasn’t always with my fists. I did more for guys not fighting than fighting. Fighting got me credibility, I’d stick up for people and do things some people wouldn’t. But I got to affect guys because they knew I cared about them. I wasn’t their coach, their dad, their agent. Maybe they felt they were competing with some of their younger teammates for ice time, for a call-up, and I don’t think many guys felt that with me.

“I couldn’t tell them how to be a world-class hockey player. But maybe I could help them get through the tribulations of trying to be one. I got to see Hickey, Scotty Mayfield, Alec Martinez, Jake Muzzin — the list goes on and on of guys I got to play with who played in the NHL and still do.”

Mayfield was in his first full pro season and ended up sharing a house with Johnson and another recent college grad, Riley Wetmore.

“JJ’s a big teddy bear,” Mayfield said. “No doubt the toughest guy I ever played with, but he was like the team Dad. We had a great routine in our house: If we didn’t have a game, we’d watch ‘Jeopardy!’ together and you’d get a point for calling out the right answer. Most times me and Wets had to pool our points to keep up with JJ. He still won. He loved to wrestle, too. I’m not a small guy but he’s a tough SOB. It was a fun year.”

Johnson loved that season, too. He and Gallant became fast friends, sitting at the back of the bus and thinking about which NHL heavyweights they’d fight and how they’d approach each one. Somehow it doesn’t sound strange — even six years ago, the AHL could be a free-for-all of fisticuffs, and Gallant (255 penalty minutes) and Johnson (195) fit right in. There were 13 AHLers with more PIMs than Johnson that season.

At the NHL level, the Islanders were a mess in 2013-14. GM Garth Snow’s major move in the first month of the season — sending Matt Moulson, a first- and second-round picks to the Sabres for Thomas Vanek — backfired badly. The Isles muddled along, then sunk when John Tavares suffered a season-ending knee injury at the Sochi Olympics in February.

The remainder of that season for Snow and Jack Capuano was finding out which of their prospects and young players could be part of the Isles going forward. The lineups for the games over the final two weeks of 2013-14 featured names that held some promise once upon a time: John Persson, Johan Sundstrom, Kevin Czuczman. Also some familiar names just getting started: Anders Lee, Brock Nelson, Ryan Strome.

And, for Game 79, Gallant.

“For me,” Johnson said, “I recognized it was coming to an end and he was ascending in terms of one of those guys, pound for pound, just a raw, fearless, huge-hearted, do-anything kind of guy. It’s easy to love Brett Gallant. I more saw it for him than myself. When he had that first game (against Ottawa), I drove down to Long Island so I could be there. And he fought Matt Kassian, one of the toughest guys around. I was jumping out of my seat there! So, so excited for him.”

Little did Johnson know he’d be making a similar drive down from Bridgeport a few days later after getting a call from Snow.

“The one thing looking at my time with the Islanders, it was a land of opportunity for a lot of guys,” Capuano said. “Moulson, (Matt) Martin, Hickey, (PA) Parenteau. We always rewarded guys that worked hard. Justin was no different. Spent a ton of time in minor hockey, in the Coast, worked his way up to Manchester, then he came to Bridgeport. Close to 200 penalty minutes. The homework I had on him — was a total team guy, would do anything for his teammates, just a character guy, a great guy. Those are the kind of guys we wanted to have on the Island. We weren’t the most talented team, but we worked.

“And it’s great that Garth gave a guy like JJ a chance — a good role model for the kids in Bridgeport because he worked. Every single day in practice, he worked. We gave him a chance, but he earned that chance. There’s not too many GMs who would’ve done what Garth did, but he rewarded guys who did what he asked them to do.”

(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

Johnson got the call on Friday and headed to Newark for Islanders-Devils, Game 81. Snow pulled him into an empty room.

“He told me, ‘Just go play tonight, take it all in,’” Johnson said. “He had tremendous respect for Mr. (Lou) Lamoriello; the Devils had Marty Brodeur, Patrik Elias, Jaromir Jagr. Garth wanted no silliness that night. But in Buffalo, ‘Do what you do.’”

Johnson wasn’t a natural fighter. He studied, he learned. YouTube was a big help once he got to the AHL and took mixed martial arts classes in Alaska in the summer. Going into that season finale in Buffalo, he knew there was only one opponent he wanted.

It started in warmups. Johnson did his usual two laps without a helmet, which he thought was embarrassing, but Matt Carkner insisted — “He basically took the buckets off mine and Brett’s heads,” Johnson said. Then he sat down near the red line to stretch, barely a foot away from Scott.

“I apologized right off the bat for not having my helmet on, because I thought that was a little much for a guy in his second game,” Johnson said. “So I said, ‘No disrespect, but we gotta fight tonight.’ He goes, ‘My coach (Ted Nolan) likes you too much for me to beat you up.’”

Ted Nolan’s son, Jordan, was a teammate of Johnson’s in Manchester in the years prior. The Kings didn’t want their young prospect fighting in the AHL, so Johnson would step in for him. “Ted was so good to me. He’d invite me to dinner with him and Jordan when he was in town,” Johnson said. “I have a ton of respect for him. He’d even told me that day not to fight Scott. He didn’t think it would be good for me.”

Johnson felt like he had an advantage from years of fighting taller opponents. When bigger guys scrapped, they tended not to bend their knees much, just using their reach to keep shorter guys like Johnson at bay. Johnson’s technique was to get in tight, keep his center of gravity low and just wail away in close to negate the reach advantage.

But the warmup conversation with Scott wasn’t going the way Johnson wanted. “He says, ‘Why don’t you fight (Zenon) Konopka?” Johnson said. “Well, I said, that’s not what people really want to see. ‘Oh yeah?’ he goes. ‘We’ll see.’ Last thing I said was, ‘Yeah, we will see.’ And I just nodded. When I got back to the locker room, Brett was sitting next to me. I was really aware of the opportunity and I knew how fortunate I was to be there, I think he could see I was … ready. He just tapped me on the knee and said, ‘You OK?’”

The Sabres iced the puck on the first shift and Capuano sent his fourth line out: Johnson and Gallant with Mike Halmo, another feisty rookie pro, in the middle. Scott was on the bench still. “I think Brett told Halmo to lose the draw,” Johnson said.

The puck came out of the zone and Konopka hopped the boards first. Scott had a leg over, waiting for his man to come off. “Konopka came out first and I was right by the bench,” Johnson said. “I just shook my head and yelled, ‘Scott!’ Just like that. ‘Scott!’ It must have sounded crazy.”

Scott came on and they dropped the gloves. Scott threw the first few punches as Johnson tried to get inside leverage. Johnson got off a couple of lefts that didn’t connect, they wrestled a bit and then Johnson caught Scott flush. The camera didn’t catch the Islanders’ reaction from the bench, but the cut to Capuano shows the hint of a smile on the coach’s face.

“Guys try to make their mark when they come up the best way they know how,” Capuano said. “If they’re a goal scorer, a goalie, whatever. Justin made his mark with the physical side. Good on Scott for fighting him when he probably didn’t have to. And Justin showed why he was able to play pro hockey for a long time.”

As he skated to the penalty box, Travis Hamonic skated over to yell in Johnson’s ear. “He goes, ‘You’re a legend!’” Johnson said with a laugh. “I looked over at the bench, guys were high-fiving — you’d have thought it was a junior B game in Saskatchewan. And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Did that just happen?’”

Johnson flew back to Long Island — he asked the attendant on the charter to wrap up his meal, drawing some good-natured ribbing from his Islander teammates — and headed into the offseason. He played one more year with his hometown Aces and then eight games with the AHL Toronto Marlies in 2015-16. And that was it.

“That was the culmination,” Johnson said of his night in Buffalo. “I was lucky it got to see the light of day. I can say it worked out. Whatever that life’s dedication or commitment, I got to see the highest peak of it. Growing up, you get cut, don’t make teams, you go through all the juvenile emotions — maybe I’m not good enough to be friends with my friends because they made the team — things like that.

“There’s the awkwardness at times of being a black hockey player. I think I was treated differently, but in a good way. I had the best of both worlds. The part of town I was from is very diverse, and then just how I evolved and matured and all the people I’ve been around … Hockey brought these guys into my life and I’m better for it. To send them a text now and get one back from guys who are in the NHL, the AHL, that makes me happy.

“When you get to do something and be appreciated for it, man, there isn’t anything better in life. And I had that. Having that time in hockey, with the Islanders, it set me up for the rest of my life.”

(Top photo: Gary Wiepert / Associated Press)

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