Entire Predators family invested in success of at-risk teen

Where Malik Johnson lives, drug deals go down outside his doorstep. Cousins die in his arms. Parents do time in jail. And so do their kids.

Just two weeks ago, police say, a young man Johnson’s age robbed, shot and killed another teen in a cocaine-related incident at James A. Cayce Homes. It happened in a parking lot just outside Johnson’s front door.

Another horror in an adolescence riddled with them.

“I have had a long, long life,” 18-year-old Johnson says. “I have come way too far from 12 years old.”

Twelve is significant for Johnson. It is around that time that he experienced the first in a string of expulsions that would bounce him from school to school amid a jolt of loss, delinquency and defiance.

It is also the age that Johnson formed the relationship that may shape the rest of his life. That year, the Big Brothers Big Sisters program paired him with a mentor, an athlete named Joel Ward, whose purpose was to serve as a stabilizing presence.

In the beginning, Johnson had no idea Ward played professional hockey for the Nashville Predators. And he didn’t know that a few years later — when everyone could have given up on him — he would receive the unprecedented support of an entire NHL organization, everyone from a former executive vice president to the equipment manager.

“People thought I would be dead by 18,” Johnson says.

But “he’s a man now,” says Ward, whose current team, the San Jose Sharks, will host the Predators on Wednesday. “He’s come a long way.” A far cry from the shy, slightly pudgy seventh-grader Ward first met.

They bonded first over basketball, shooting hoops at the Y and watching NBA games. Ward rooted for the Toronto Raptors; Johnson liked Oklahoma City. So every time the two teams played, they always argued over who was the best.

The two came from similar backgrounds. They each had two brothers. Both felt the absence of their father at a young age. But it was hard, at first, to connect beyond the sports they watched together.

“I had trust issues,” Johnson says. “I was hurt a lot when I was young.”

Ward worked to make inroads where he could — particularly with school work. When Johnson's grades dipped, trips to the Y were replaced with tutoring sessions over pizza. But sports remained a significant player. "He took me to my first hockey game," Johnson says, remembering the "big ole" Ford Explorer Ward picked him up in.

The first Nashville Predator Johnson ever met was Shea Weber. Now the entire team knows him by name — but a lot has happened in between.

An expanded family

With Ward by his side, Johnson became a part of the Predators family. In the winter, he worked the auction tables in the arena, selling Jordin Tootoo whistles to fans. In the summer, he interned at hockey school, leading the younger kids in skating drills. He and Ward hung out, focused on his grades and keeping him out of trouble.

But here's the thing about professional sports: The athletes are always in transition. And in 2011, after three seasons with the Predators, Ward moved to Washington, D.C., to play for the Capitals. That's where this story could have ended, a busy hockey player focusing on new priorities.

But that's not how it happened.

"When you hang out with Malik you get addicted to the kid," Ward says. "You just can't pick up and leave somebody behind like that."

Johnson wasn't abandoned. Instead, his hockey family expanded. With Ward gone, Chris Parker, then the Predators executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, took over as Johnson's Big Brother. Many days after school, Johnson would sit in Parker's office doing homework and hanging out with the front office staff.

He would make his way down to the locker room, observing strength and conditioning coach David Good and palling around with the equipment staff.

He was a constant presence. Everyone knew him. Everyone was invested.

And then, for six months, no one knew where he was.

He disappeared. Because he was lost.

The loss of a little brother

Johnson didn't know how to handle it. He had seen a lot of drug trades in his life. A lot of deaths. But this was different. This was his younger brother, Tarik Davis. This was family. And it wasn't even the rough neighborhood that got him. It was genetics.

The last time they talked, Davis complained of chest pain. He was in the house by himself when it got worse. Luckily, there was a phone.

Johnson says he couldn’t go to the hospital that day. It was too hard. His brother, who had a pre-existing heart condition, fought for a week and three days. He died on April 28, 2013.

That's when Johnson disappeared from the Predators. He got in trouble, he says, not knowing how to handle his grief. He got expelled from Stratford High School, where he was a sophomore. He robbed houses and did other "bad stuff with bad people,” he says. “A lot of them are locked up or dead now.”

Johnson spent two weeks in juvenile detention. His mother sat and watched him get sentenced. She broke down in tears, seeing her child in handcuffs.

“It was hard for me to turn around and look at her,” Johnson says.

It was hard for him to see a better future.

But the hockey family who watched him grow from the little boy to a man didn't give up on him. Instead, they invested even more.

Now, in the underground recesses of Bridgestone Arena on game nights, Johnson folds freshly laundered towels and fills recently drained water bottles. He slings bags weighted down with hockey gear into the back of metal trucks. And he shuttles through concrete corridors outside the Nashville Predators locker room meeting requests from referees as they come on and off the ice on game night.

The work isn’t glamorous, but it may be lifesaving.

“He has a purpose down here,” equipment manager Pete Rogers says of his teenage assistant.

He has a second home.

Johnson has spent the last two seasons working for the Predators equipment staff, learning and earning responsibility. There was a little bit of a rough start, but he had begun to understand expectations.

"He's learning things when he talks to those officials that help him in his life to get away from the environment that he came from," Rogers says.

And he is making changes in other ways, with other support.

"He's made the effort," Rogers says. "This isn’t all on us. He’s got to want it as much as we want it for him."

Together they are allowing him to grow.

Rebecca King, the Predators senior director of community relations, helps Johnson in school at Lighthouse Christian. With tuition assistance from Ward, Johnson has a new chance to achieve what no one in his family ever has — graduating from high school.

It's a team effort. Lighthouse Headmaster Brian Sweatt emails Johnson's grades to his extended Predators family, where so many on staff are looking over his shoulder, making sure his school work comes first. Johnson has turned his grades around, getting a 3.0 on his most recent report card.

And now he's playing football for Lighthouse.

On senior night last week, nearly a dozen people from the Predators front office came out to the game. They all wore navy blue shirts, with Johnson and the number 56 printed on the back.

When Johnson walked to the center of the field during halftime, he looked up to see them in the crowd. He smiled and waved. They waved back.

He looks so different in those pads than he did six years ago. He's broad-shouldered now, to go with his broad smile.

And when he strides through the concourse at Bridgestone Arena it's with confidence, carrying swagger.

He can make his way from the sunlit, glass-walled meeting rooms in the front office to the windowless underground bowels of player locker rooms and equipment manager offices in just minutes.

He knows nearly every corridor and back stairwell. And almost every person he passes knows him.

The 18-year-old has grown up here.