It isn’t easy to mentor legions of young writers, but if it was ever difficult for Jason Botchford, if it took any work at all, those seams never showed.

It seemed to come naturally to him, and it seemed that way because it was genuine.

Jason enjoyed supporting up-and-coming young writers, in part, I think, because he enjoyed participating in the conversation around the team he covered. If you were contributing to that conversation in a meaningful way — whether you had a good tweet on game night, or were aspiring to build your name in sports media — Jason had time for you and a kind word.

Or an unkind word if he disagreed with you. That was all part of the fun, too.

Jason’s generosity to a younger generation was perhaps unseen by his readers and his media peers, but it was marked and significant. James Mirtle recapped it at length after Jason passed away this past spring.

The Vancouver Canucks — an organization that was so often the target of his unvarnished, colourful criticism — were touched by it too.

In Jason’s honour, the club will be carving the Botchford Vancouver Millionaires “V” logo designed by Chris Conte into the desk located at Seat 65 in the Rogers Arena press box. It’s the seat that Jason occupied on home game days — often working on his Provies or Athletties into the wee hours of the morning.

The Botchford V engraving at Seat 65 will be ready for the home opener, according to the Canucks.

“I’m really proud to have anything to do with how people will remember Botch,” Conte told The Athletic. “He was my favourite local sportswriter, and to have something I designed used to remember him — it’s a real honour.”

(Courtesy Jeff Vinnick/Vancouver Canucks)

The cornerstone of the club’s efforts to memorialize Vancouver’s preeminent hockey journalist is The Botchford Project, a media mentorship program the Canucks launched on Thursday, and that The Athletic has committed to sponsoring in its inaugural season.

It’s going to take an army to replace the kind of impact Jason had on the next generation of young journalists in Vancouver.

This program recognizes that.

It attempts to formalize and recreate the kind of “in” that Jason gave so many young journalists in the Vancouver market, including The Athletic contributors Wyatt Arndt and Harman Dayal.

Under the umbrella of this program, a variety of Vancouver sports media personalities, affiliated with a variety of different outlets, will cooperate with the Canucks communications department to help mentor a selection of aspiring journalists. The fellows will be chosen from among those who apply online, with a focus on identifying, supporting and credentialing emerging voices.

The plan is for the Canucks to curate a shortlist of entries, and the Botchford family will select the participants directly. These fellows will be paid for their work and will have their stories published at Canucks.com/BotchfordProject.

It’s a fitting tribute to a man who meant so much to so many young journalists, myself included.

On a personal note, and in the spirit of this program, when I think of Jason’s impact on my career, I think back to March 2012. It wasn’t that long ago, and yet it feels like a lifetime has passed since.

Perhaps it’s that I still had hair back then.

I’d successfully pitched a story to the Vancouver Province about a couple of Chicago Wolves players who might conceivably factor into the Vancouver Canucks’ postseason plans once the salary cap and 23-man roster limit lifted in the playoffs. I’d covered some junior games, but this was going to be my first time in a professional dressing room.

On a lark, I figured I’d shoot an e-mail to Jason. He and I had interacted occasionally on Twitter, and he’d plugged my work here and there, but I’d never written him directly.

So I sent him a note, told him what I was writing, and asked if he had any tips.

“Oh, so I missed a great angle,” he replied. “Wow.”

It was a kindness, of course.

Jason complimented the angle, noting that he’d just talked to the player I was planning to speak with and hadn’t considered the line of questioning I was planning to pursue. I’m certain he had, but it was a nice way to go about building a young journalist’s confidence.

Jason had a gift for this.

“Damn you,” he wrote.

He then went into detail. He opened up and gave me his tips for working a dressing room.

In the interest of paying forward the mentorship Jason so generously granted me all those years ago, his e-mail is presented in full, with only players names redacted:

“First, have a nice list of topics/questions ready. You never know when you’ll be (REDACTED) — you have to have back up. You never want to be at a loss for words, especially early. There’s time to save any intervu even if it starts out with one-word brick walls.

Be real. Talk to them like you would talk to me at a bar. Don’t be formal. Your goal is conversation. I try to sit down with them on the bench. But that move is by feel, and can be hard to execute.

I’ve sat down before and the guy is still standing. Awkward.

Helps if there’s a scrum and you wait it out.

Have several different ways to ask the same question. Don’t be afraid to go back to a question even if you’ve moved on in the interview. I usually cycle back a couple of times.

If you get a good quote, something that makes you say ‘holy shit, I can’t believe he said that’ — marinate it. Keep him on that topic. Flush it out. It can get better.

Bring a little butter. ‘Hey Higgins, I never really appreciated how good you were along the wall until I started watching you every game’

If you’re coming with the hammer, couch it. ‘People say this’ is an easy out.”

With that advice in hand, a lengthy correspondence between Jason and me flourished from that point until the week of his death. And Jason became a mentor for me, too.

The tools that Jason shared with me were the same ones he used to stand out in a crowded, cacophonous Vancouver sports market.

They were the tools he used to get completely unique material out of the room, during both a golden era for Canucks hockey and particularly during the lean years of the club’s most recent rebuild.

“He was an awesome reporter,” Elias Pettersson said. “Obviously he always said good things about me.

“He was so interested in small details. Like what curve I use, how I shoot, what I (think) when I’m shooting.

“I’ve never had a reporter that was so interested in things like that — it was cool. He was such a cool person and it’s tragic what happened.

“He was easy to talk to, and he was a great guy.”

The Botchford Project is designed so that members of the Vancouver media pool can work together to help arm the successful applicants with valuable experience as they move forward in the sports media business. Perhaps among the pool of writers selected this season and in future seasons there exists the next great Vancouver hockey writer.

It’s a program that a man who made it his business to be supportive of and create opportunities for so many aspiring sportswriters would be proud of.

(Top photo: Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia)