Here's looking at you, kid

November 23, 2007|On hockey, Kevin Paul Dupont, Globe Staff

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On one Bruins sojourn, Greenberg recalled last night, a trip to Edmonton landed Greenberg in Oiler country without his luggage. Not a crisis, really, but Greenberg was committed to be part of the TV 38 telecast back to Boston. What to do? No problem, said Johnson, as he reached into his Kappa bag and pulled out a folded-up camel hair sport jacket that he kept for all occasions.

"The thing was all wrinkled, I mean, just brutal," recalled Greenberg. "But I had no choice, so on I go with it. Now this is almost 25 years ago, and I was just married. I get a call from my wife, Karin, the next day, and she says, 'Nate, what about that coat? It had to be three sizes too big for you, and those wrinkles, horrible. You're not looking too good.' I gave it back to Johnson the next day and said, 'Thanks, but listen, I think you could fit a family of three in this thing.' You know, he didn't care . . . all he said was, 'Is that right, kid?' "

As the decades flipped by, and the game grew more complex in the way it was scouted, coached, managed, even played, Johnson maintained that simplicity was best. He played on all those great Habs Cup teams. He coached the Bruins to their Cup in 1972, which remains their most recent.

And to the end, he believed that most often the best players would win, and he believed it was the coach's job to have the best players on the ice most of the time, and it was a discerning coach who could figure exactly at what moment in a game those players should be played. He learned that under legendary Habs coach Toe Blake.

"Just old nuts-and-bolts coaching," Johnson recalled, musing on Blake's way this past June, when he and five other living members of the Habs' squads that won the five straight Cups met in Ottawa during the Cup finals. "No blackboards, videotapes . . . nothing. Just knowing what players to put out there at what times. Whatever the game, he could tell who could outplay who out there . . . and that's what the game is all about, isn't it?"

Simple sport, hockey. Meant to be played honestly, with ample amounts of hard work and good fun. Tom Johnson left the world this week, having lived all that to the fullest.

Obituary, Page C19 Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at dupont@globe.com.