It is only August, but Melville Millionaires’ head coach, Doug Johnson’s famous wit, is already on point.
“I am in coaching because I love working with the kids and the game, and I did not want to take over the family farm,” he said.
“Plus, I got hurt and old so I couldn’t play anymore.”
A sense of the honest, ‘what you see is what you get’ is front and centre at all times, and that is what his players should continue to expect as he enters his second year at the helm of the Bankmen, his 14th in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League and 21st in coaching.
His career has taken him to Billings, Montana; Odessa, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; Nipawin, SK; the Pas, MB; and Melville.
After all those stops, Johnson, 48, is clear on what he brings as a coach and what he wants his players to know about him.
“I’m a no ‘BS’ kind of coach,” he said.
“There will be no mind games. I will speak the truth, and they might not like it, but the guys who take the time to get to know me (tend to) understand and respect it. We look for competition, hockey sense, character and skill.”
Last year, the club reached the post-season for the first time since 2018 with one of the league’s youngest rosters, and the community responded by packing out the CN Community Centre. Given that youth from a year ago, all sorts of talent and critical leaders can return this time.
To put it in some perspective, the team’s Top three scorers from ’23-24—Caden Drury, Luc Bydal, and Jadon Iyogun—were all under 20 a season ago, and in Bydal and Cole Keen, the Mils possessed two of the league’s Top five rookie point-getters.
Johnson, a Swift Current native, desperately wants to keep the competitiveness going for the great community in Melville.
“The support for a winning team is phenomenal,” Johnson said.
“The people are extraordinary; we have had more neighbours introduce themselves to us here in Melville than anywhere else. We like what we have coming back and our recruiting class. The returners understand what we want and how we want things done, which will help tremendously since they can help the young guys with expectations and standards, unlike last year when all the players were essentially first-year guys with me.”
