BY JOHN POZENEL - News Staff Writer
Saginaw Gears’ center Jimmy Johnston is a gifted hockey player — his 57 goals in the past two IHL seasons amply proves that point — but hockey isn’t Jimmy Johnston’s best sport.
Johnston is one of the stars of the National Lacrosse League. He was professional lacrosse’s eighth leading scorer this summer with 79 goals and 86 assists for 165 points while playing for the Long Island Tomahawks and is considered one of the leading candidates for the NLL’s Rookie of the Year Award.
The Peterborough, Ont., native says, while the two games may appear similar to fans, hockey and lacrosse are basically two different sports, involving different skills.
“Lacrosse is a bit rougher than hockey,” said Johnston. “There are more injuries, which is why each team carries 27 players.”
The scores in lacrosse are higher than in hockey and Johnston says it is because there is no offside pass rule and players can control the lacrosse ball better than the puck in hockey because of the webbed netting in their lacrosse sticks.
“You can throw the ball from one end of the rink to the other if you want to,” said Johnston. “There is a pocket in a lacrosse stick so you can control the ball better and it is harder for the other players to take it away.”
Johnston said he has played hockey most of his life but took up lacrosse only five years ago.
He explained that Peterborough was a lacrosse hotbed. “There are probably 20 guys from Peterborough playing in the league,” he said.
Johnston was Long Island’s No. 4 draft pick after his junior career at Peterborough and he quickly established himself as one of the stars in the rugged, but little publicized, sport.
He missed the first eight games of the season because the Gears were embroiled in the Turner Cup Playoffs.
In 37 games he had 199 shots on goal and converted 39.7 per cent of them into goals, the third best efficiency rate in the NLL.
Johnston was second in scoring on his team only to Doug Hayes, who led the league with 230 points on 104 goals and 126 assists.
The Tomahawks won the NLL’s regular season championship with 60 points but were ousted in the first round of the playoffs by the Quebec Caribous, otherwise Johnston probably wouldn’t be here for the start of the hockey season.
Other than a brief overlap in seasons, Johnston says he likes the idea of playing both hockey and lacrosse. “I don’t mind it,” Jimmy said. “I’ve been off for two weeks now.”
He believes pro lacrosse will eventually become as popular with fans as hockey is. “We averaged 3,500 fans at Long Island (the team plays its games in the Nassau Coliseum, home of the NHL’s Islanders in the winter). Montreal really does well. They averaged 9,000 fans a game, but it is probably going to take a couple years before it catches on.”
The NLL has six teams: Long Island, Quebec, Montreal, Philadelphia, Boston and Maryland.
The average salary in pro lacrosse is $12,000. Johnston said he didn’t make that much this season because it was his rookie year.
“This next year I should be one of the higher paid ones,” he said.
In the meantime, the little lacrosse star is one of the most valuable skaters on the Gears’ hockey team.
Gear fans will get their first look at the 1975-76 team tonight when the Saginaw icers face off against the Toledo Goaldiggers in an IHL exhibition game at 7:30 p.m. at the Civic Center.
Tonight’s game, along with Sunday’s contest against the Flint Generals, have been designed “Student Night” by the Gears’ management. All students will be admitted for $2.25.
The Gears and Goaldiggers played a bitterly contested Turner Cup final series last spring, with Toledo winning the seventh game in the final minutes to take the cup.
Both clubs will be playing some of the players who participated in that series, but both will also be testing some new players for the first time.
“It will be about half and half on old players and new ones for us,” said Gears’ Manager-Coach Don Perry.
Perry said he expected to use newcomers Barry Ashby and Harvey Stewart in goal tonight.
