The kid's face is unmistakable.
Peeking out from under a black and red knit hat, a Peruvian helmet style number with ear flaps and long braided strings on each side that, years later, would draw chirps from his NHL teammates, is 12-year-old Kent Johnson . He couldn’t look more Canadian if he’d tried.
Stretched back against the glass from the first row at Scotiabank Saddledome during a Calgary Flames warmup in 2014 ― British Columbia chill, as usual ― is a kid who would develop into the fifth pick of the 2021 NHL draft and a lineup mainstay for the Blue Jackets. In the picture, he looks very young and proud to be wearing his favorite T-shirt in front of Johnny Gaudreau, whose jersey it was modeled after.
On the back was a No. 13 and Gaudreau's last name.
In the photo, another of Johnson’s future Blue Jackets teammates, Sean Monahan , is looking in the direction of the camera. It's a remarkable memory for Johnson, who shared it, with sorrow, on social media after Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew, were killed Aug. 29 while riding bikes in New Jersey.
At the time it was taken, Johnson was ecstatic about that portrait.
“We were at the Mac’s (AAA) Tournament in Calgary for Kent’s older brother, Kyle, and the whole team went to a Flames game at the Saddledome,” said Jay Johnson, Kent's father. “We had the cheap group tickets way up in the nosebleed section, so far up that you couldn’t see the stands across the way.”
As the story goes, Kent spent most of that post-Christmas trip alternating between his brother's games and finding pickup games on outdoor rinks that he’d never gotten to experience while growing up in temperate Port Moody, British Columbia. The day of the Flames' game, he asked if his dad could take him early for the warmup, before his brother’s team planned to arrive.
The goal was to see “Johnny Hockey,” an exciting, undersized, playmaking rookie who had taken the NHL by storm after starring at Boston College. Scores of kids his age, especially those who grew up in Calgary, had the same idea.
“There’s a lot of other guys that I studied, too, but I’d watch a lot of him against the (Vancouver) Canucks,” Kent Johnson said. "I was obviously a Canucks fan, but there was one playoff series where I was just loving it because Johnny was dominating, and they beat the Canucks. I was like, 'Man, this guy’s unreal.’ ”
Gaudreau was small in comparison to most NHL players. Generously, he was listed at 5 feet 9, 165 pounds. Johnson, who is 6-0, 180, grew up as the smallest player on the ice before he turned 14 and shot up “about three inches a year” over four years.
Before those growth spurts, Johnson firmly believed he'd be Gaudreau’s size. It created a chip on his shoulder and fueled his drive.
"Johnny was obviously a great player, but Kent had a real connection to John because he was really small," Jay Johnson said. "He was, by far, the smallest kid on his teams. He was good when he was little, so he made the Bantam AAA team when he was only 90 pounds, when the average kid might’ve been 120 or 130, and some way bigger. So, he had that connection to Johnny. He just loved how he played hockey, and he told me at some point, ‘If Johnny Gaudreau can do it, I can do it, too.’ "
Johnson reveled in Gaudreau's NHL success, even when it came at the expense of his beloved Canucks.
“You know how it is with small guys,” Kent Johnson said. “It’s like, ‘Can they do it in the playoffs?’ Obviously, I hated hearing that, and I loved seeing Johnny prove those guys wrong. So, I would study his game a lot. There’s some little things I do now that I feel like I got first from watching him.”
That continued with the Blue Jackets, where Johnson watched Gaudreau closely, looking for anything else he could learn. Gaudreau, meanwhile, watched in disbelief one night as the kid from the University of Michigan pulled off a "Michigan" lacrosse goal against the New York Islanders — making 'Johnny Hockey' giggle like a little kid and Nationwide Arena roar.
As for getting his cherished Gaudreau photo at age 12, it was quite a hike for the Johnsons to get down to ice level at the cavernous Saddledome, which is literally shaped like a saddle.
“We had about 50 seats together, so we were, legitimately, in the top row,” Johnson said, chuckling. “You could hardly see the game, although I do remember Johnny had a sick apple (assist) in that game, and I was pumped. It was just really cool to get down there and see him up close in warmup.”
It was a routine move for Jay Johnson, who has taken those type of pictures for his sons on multiple occasions near other NHL stars. There’s another in his collection where Kent poses in front of Sidney Crosby at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and Rick Nash can be spotted in the background.
Nash is now the Blue Jackets' director of hockey operations and was part of the team's front office when Johnson was drafted. His famed No. 61 jersey hangs in the rafters .
Meanwhile, the Johnsons' Gaudreau photo became a mind-blowing memory eight years later. Gaudreau signed with the Blue Jackets and became teammates with the baby-faced kid who once owned his T-shirt. Jay Johnson couldn't help but show the photo to Gaudreau's parents once, Guy and Jane, in the Jackets' family and friends room.
They loved it, and Kent loved getting to know their son "like a big brother," for two years.
“He was a big inspiration for me,” Johnson said. “I was a really late grower, always skinny, and really small. I honestly thought I was going to be 5-8, so he was the guy I wanted to be. I wanted to be just like him and play like him, and I still try to play like him in a lot of my play style. So, it’s cool looking back.”
The Blue Jackets’ No. 13 jersey, which belonged to Johnson for one season before he eagerly forked it over, hangs in the Jackets’ locker room in Gaudreau's memory. The driver who caused the Gaudreau brothers' deaths, whose blood-alcohol content was higher than the legal limit, is behind bars while facing two counts of death by auto plus other charges.
Sean Higgins' next court appearance had been scheduled for Tuesday in New Jersey, the same day the Blue Jackets host the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in their home opener. It's going to be an emotional night, as the Gaudreaus are honored and celebrated.
Kent Johnson, who on Friday turns 22, the same age as Gaudreau in the photo, will be in uniform No. 91, the number he picked after gifting 13 to his childhood idol. Jay Johnson will watch from the stands, proud of his son, and both might drift back for a moment to that night in Calgary, when they captured an image a decade ago that's now worth a million words.
“It was great luck that we happened to snap that picture,” the elder Johnson said. “You know, what are the odds that he makes it to the NHL and John’s on his team? It’s been a lot of fun to have that photo and tell the story.”
bhedger@dispatch.com
@BrianHedger
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Kent Johnson was a Johnny Gaudreau fan before teammate: 'He was a big inspiration'
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