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Catching up with George Johnson
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Ryan Pike
Dec 14, 2017, 10:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 14, 2017, 01:10 EST
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In the pantheon of Canadian hockey reporters and columnists, Calgary’s George Johnson is among the very best. Originally arriving in town in 1984 as a reporter for the Calgary Sun, Johnson has been a fixture in the local sports pages for over three decades.
Now plying his trade as a writer for the Calgary Flames website, Johnson also recently saw the release of his book 100 Things Flames Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die.
We recently had the chance to chat with Johnson about his tenure covering the Flames and his experience writing the book.
When asked who the most interesting player was to chat with, Johnson didn’t hesitate before answering: Theoren Fleury.
He came in and he would say things off the top of his head. He was just different. Even when he was a million dollar hockey player and the best player on this team, one of the best players in the league, it was still like he was trying to fill the rink in Moose Jaw.
To illustrate his point, Johnson recalled a time during Fleury’s tenure when he went out of his way to get everyone all riled up:
I remember one time they were in L.A. and Gretzky got a few of his penalties for chirping in the referee’s ear. And the next day I get one of these “come here, come here…” from Theo. “Did you see the performance Gretzky put on last night?” I said yeah. He said, “You know what happens, whenever time Gary (meaning Bettman) goes to LA, he goes over to Wayne’s house to cut the grass, make the dinner and look after the kids so Wayne and Janet can go out.”
I looked at him and say, okay, I’m giving you a chance to get out of it. Is that on the record? He says, “Sure!” So I print it. And of course everybody talks about it. About a week later I get the “come over here” again from Theo. And I said what’s going on? And he goes, “Oh, he called last night and boy was he mad.”
Among Flames coaches and management figures over the years, Johnson listed off several that were good to talk with as a journalist – but noted that none of them were particularly bad:
Crispy [Terry Crisp] was really entertaining and he would talk to you. Dave King was analytical and very thoughtful. Badger was all over the map and “How we doing today? How we doing today? How we feeling today?” … Pierre Page was great. Pierre Page was your prototypical French Canadian guy, just wired for sound, but a lovely guy.
I can’t think of a really bad, acidic kind of relationship with a coach… except maybe Darryl a little bit, you know, at the end. But really, we’ve been lucky that way. I’ve been lucky that way.
Johnson may have built his reputation with decades of reporting and by penning columns that were considerably shorter than a book, but he likens the process of writing 100 Things to writing 100 columns, with the subject matter spanning much of his career:
What I was doing was I was doing my job, but I was doing 100 columns. That’s what I was doing, and I was doing them on people I like and incidents that I lived through like going to Japan, and having the three meter diving board down at the end where they were playing, or the Friendship Tour to the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union where we changing money in hotel rooms and you felt like it was a John La Carre novel because you had the guy in there giving you the rate.
For me it was great because I was looking back at my professional career for 34 years. I covered other things, but hockey has been the main thing. So it was a lot of fun.
100 Things Flames Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die is available at bookstores everywhere (or on Amazon).

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