Jonathon Brodie - Recorder & Times

The Brockville Braves held their annual year-end awards ceremony Sunday at the Memorial Centre and with that it marked the end of the relatively brief Braves career of Henry Johnson, arguably the best goalie the team ever had in the organization's 50-plus years.

That statement was posed to Johnson at the awards banquet and predictably he deflected the title of being Brockville's best netminder to someone else.

He pointed to Clarke Saunders, who holds the team's career win record at 81 over three years between 2007 and 2010. Johnson finished with 55 regular season wins over two seasons.

"There's been a lot of good goalies," Johnson said.

The 6-foot-0 netminder has always been about the team. An example? He's won the league's goalie of the year title twice. He owns CCHL season (9) and career shutout (11) records. He earned a scholarship to Bemidji University in his home state of Minnesota. Johnson certainly didn't leave the recent awards banquet empty-handed as he was given the Braves CCHL Three Star Award (for the second straight year), the Doug Summers Most Valuable Player Award (for the second straight year), and namedplayoff MVP.

On Sunday, though, when addressing the crowd at the banquet, Johnson claimed one of the greatest days of his life was when the Braves beat the Ottawa Jr. Senators 3-0 in Game 3 in the recent quarter-final.

The game meant so much to him not because it added to his shutout list, but because the Braves as a team took down a club that had beaten them in the 11 games prior.

"It was a lot of fun winning that game," said Johnson, posting a combined .923 save percentage over his two seasons with the Braves. "They had beaten the team (11) games in a row dating back to last year, so it felt good."

That's been Johnson's style all year - give the credit to everyone, but himself.

It's ironic that someone who has always shied away from the limelight since coming to Brockville in 2015 has done so much to be put in it.

It's crazy to think that three summers ago Johnson was considering hanging up the skates for good. Back then junior hockey teams weren't overly interested in him.

He did eventually have a few clubs knocking on his door leading into the 2015-16 season, his best offer coming as the backup for the Trenton Golden Hawks before Braves general manager and co-owner Dustin Traylen offered him the starting job in Brockville.

When recruiting Johnson, Traylen saw just 40 minutes of play from the goaltender at the Chowder Cup in 2015. It's all he needed to see, although Traylen will be the first to tell anyone he never expected to be signing what he ended up getting.

"We're forever grateful that I decided to go to Boston," Traylen said. "Looking back at it fondly, it was the best decision we could have made at the time."

In Johnson's rookie season he was the cornerstone of the Braves. That team was built on strong defence with their netminder the face of that.

Traylen believes Johnson stole more than a few wins for the club in 2016-17 season to move them from being a bubble playoff team to fighting for the fourth-spot in the standings for most of the season.

"He gave us an opportunity to compete every game," Traylen said. "For the layperson who maybe doesn't understand, having Johnson in the net guaranteed we made the playoffs and that was huge for us."

Other award winners at the Braves athletic banquet included Devin Moore getting the Don Wallace Memorial Award; Sean Allen getting the Fred Adolf Most Sportsmanlike Award; Matte Halle getting the Peter Kelly Carefree Pools Trainer's Helper Award; Andrew Jarvis getting the Mike "Dogger" Daoust Award; Jonathan Hill getting the Macosham Van Lines Most Improved Player Award; Mack Hancock getting the Murray Osborne Rookie of the Year Award; and Cameron Crotty getting the Jim Chapman Memorial Best Defenceman Award.

Original Story at Recorder.ca