They're the TikTok generation, and they're changing sports as we know it. As Gen Z gains increasing purchasing power, all areas of sport are feeling their influence.

Gen Z doesn't think or act like fans of yesteryear, so their alternative approach to sports consumption means leagues and teams must rethink their marketing strategies. Capturing their attention is vital to maintain the revenue growth sports have enjoyed for decades.

"The traditional mindset fan is someone who watches the broadcast or buys tickets and goes to the game," said Heidi Browning, the NHL's chief marketing officer. "But that's not how this generation thinks. They can consider themselves fans of sports by following content and following athlete stories without ever even attending a game."

Research by Morning Consult shows 33% of U.S. Gen Zers - defined as those between ages 13 and 25 - don't watch live sports broadcasts. They also don't watch them in person; almost 50% of Gen Zers in the 1,000-person survey said they'd never attended a live professional sporting event.

But none of that means they're not sports fans. "They still can engage in watercooler conversations with their friends, they still buy merchandise, they still aspire to be like certain athletes," Browning said. "So I think that we need to look broader into how we define fandom when we look at this next generation."

Part of Browning's strategy has been to engage hockey fans ages 13-17 on an annual youth advisory board that the league has been running for six years. Past participants range from all over North America - Hawaii to Newfoundland.

"The whole idea behind this program is to expose them to the business of hockey, while at the same time hearing from them how our marketing is resonating," Browning said.

theScore discussed the league's marketing efforts with Browning and the specific challenges of engaging the next generation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: What's the most surprising thing you've learned from working with the youth advisory board?

Browning: Something that's surprising is how much content they consume on a daily basis. Not only do they consume it, but they consume it on multiple channels. They have an opinion on it, they remember it, and they can give you perspective on it. The advice that they give to us is very practical but also inspirational for us and aspirational for us as we continue to shape our programs for the future.

Statistics show Gen Zers are both attending live sporting events less frequently and watching fewer broadcasts. Do you get the sense that Gen Z is watching sports less?

Browning: I think that they do watch sports, but they also look at sports through a different lens. It's not just about the game that's on the ice. It's the whole picture. By that I mean, they want to know the athletes, they want to know the human behind the visor. They want to know everything about them, their lives, personalities, families, and their interests. What are the causes they care about?

This idea of athlete-driven media is not just a hockey thing. This is a global phenomenon. So they'll follow athletes in the sport they love. They'll even follow athletes of sports they don't even watch just because they're interesting humans. It's pervasive across all sports, and it's a global shift.

Hockey culture has historically been more reserved, how do you meet the content needs of today's generation knowing NHL athletes tend to feel less comfortable sharing about their personal lives?

Browning: I think we've seen tremendous progress in hockey culture in players from the next generation who are willing to share and participate in social media. Whether you look at TikTok or Instagram, you see a lot more activity from players. Obviously, we'd like to see more of it. But we also want to make sure that whatever the players are doing, however they're participating on social media, that they feel comfortable and they're doing what's right for them and authentic to them, as opposed to trying to force them to do stuff that might not feel right.

Part of it is - how do we market our players? How do you market an individual player when we're clearly a team sport? Then the other part is, how much do the players want to participate in building their own personal brand, being out there on social media, doing interviews, and creating additional content? It's the choice of the player how much they want to lean into that.

Are there any overarching themes that unite what you're learning from the advisory board from year to year?

Browning: We've really honed in on some key categories over the years that continue to morph and change. The first is called "humans are greater than highlights." That's really about the athlete and knowing their personalities. The other part of having that authentic kind of experience is the work we do with our creators - finding these hockey influencers that aren't professional players but have strong followings on their own.

My favorite story is about Zac Bell. We were first introduced to him in our Fan Skills At Home challenge during the pandemic, and he submitted a video of his incredible skills. Then, as we came out of the pandemic, his fandom continued to grow. As his fandom has grown, the fans that follow him have grown. What's so interesting is that they feel like they've been with him in his journey, so they're committed to him.

The second is what we call "see me," and it's this idea of being noticed by a league, by a player, by a team, through a like or retweet or reshare.

So, it might be Fan Skills At Home, it might be ODR (outdoor rink) Week, it might be your playoff reactions. Any time that fans get that opportunity to share their fandom and their authentic selves and have it be acknowledged by a league, a team, or an athlete, that means everything to them.

The third is called "game on" and is about the gamification of everything. There's this idea that kids really like to show off their knowledge for the sport, they like to play little games to test their knowledge and see where they rank in a leaderboard with their peers. Any time we have the opportunity to use some of the native tools within social media, we try to introduce some form of gamification, like a highlight battle. Or, for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, we want to be able to engage people through a bracket challenge because that bracket challenge drives conversation, engagement, and awareness of the Stanley Cup Final.

What do you think will continue to help youth engage with hockey?

Browning: One of the core tenets of engaging the younger generation is inclusivity and accessibility. That's an area that we do spend a lot of time with our power players on. Many, if not all of them, have joined because they want to make the sport they love available and accessible to their peers and their friends.

We talk a lot about programs like NHL Street that are designed to get beyond some of those traditional barriers. You don't have to skate or have access to sheets of ice, we can put sticks in hands, and you can play street hockey within your community. That's been an increasingly important program throughout all of North America.

We're hockey humble and we don't often talk about the dollars that go to the communities, but our power players want us to talk about that more, emphasize all the great work that the clubs do and the league does as a whole to grow our sport. There are a lot of different ways to weave hockey into a young person's life, whether it's through education, physical activity, entertainment, or through community. These are the kinds of ideas that pop up and we talk about throughout the season.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Not long into the 1994 NHL lockout, the Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association realized it had a financial puzzle of its own to solve.

While big-league owners and players negotiated a potential salary cap to limit the soaring cost of contracts, the small, volunteer-led minor hockey association in Nova Scotia instantly lost its main source of fundraising: NHL hockey pools. The NHL might've stalled, but minor hockey in Nova Scotia was as strong as ever, and its costs were soaring, too. It needed another funding avenue.

"The fundraiser was to combat the high cost of minor hockey for players and families in an economically depressed area," said James Edwards, current president of the Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association. "Don't forget, we're talking about the mid-90s in Cape Breton. The area was built on coal mines, steel, and fishing. Those three industries were on the way out. Unemployment was high and money was scarce."

So Glace Bay tried something new: a 50/50 raffle, another fundraising staple that's embedded in hockey culture. Tickets were priced at $1, and parents dutifully volunteered to hawk them on delivery routes, in work yards, and at offices around the community.

"We had parents who traveled throughout the municipality, whether they were delivering bread or gas - we had the distribution network," Edwards said. "It caught on right away, and then it started to grow. Then with that, it offered immediate benefits. All of a sudden, we could eliminate the registration costs. Then the cost of the ice. Then we could help with the equipment."

In the three decades since, the raffle's totals have ballooned to rival professional sports teams. In December 2023, the association's 50/50 jackpot reached $213,681.50 - which means it sold over 400,000 $1 tickets in the town of 16,915 people. What started as a temporary solution to weather a three-month NHL lockout became a permanent fixture.

"We're a multi-million-dollar organization," Edwards said. "You can just imagine how popular this ticket is. People have them at work, in convenience stores, service stations, taverns, pizza joints. They're everywhere. Merchants call us asking for the tickets because it brings people into their shop."

The association has used the 50/50 proceeds to pay for refs, fund development camps for each hockey position, start a sledge hockey league, create a bursary that offsets postsecondary education costs, pay for cross-training, and create skating clubs for children as young as 2. It recently started a program for international students to try hockey for the first time.

"The problem with minor hockey development right now is the cost. But not in Glace Bay," Edwards said.

It's a Canadian thing

The Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association might have the most striking results, but successful 50/50s are hardly limited to Nova Scotia. Across the country, but particularly in Western Canada, 50/50 draws are a standard part of the experience of attending a pro sporting event.

"Being born and raised in Edmonton, 50/50s are interwoven into our DNA," said Corey Smith, chairman of the Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation. Before the pandemic, when the Oilers took their 50/50 digital, draws traditionally occurred on-site during the third period of hockey games. "From my earliest memories of going to Oilers games with my dad, the big thing was always that we had to buy a 50/50 ticket," he said.

The Oilers' recent 50/50 totals have been record-setting. "The summer of 2020 was the first time people had the opportunity to buy tickets online, and our topline revenue went to $90 million," Smith said. The Oilers bill their 50/50 as "the largest game-day raffle in professional sports" and now run draws that build across multiple home and away games to add up to super jackpots. Their Round 1 main raffle jackpot is already over $1 million, with at least one more game to go in the series. All those tickets are purchased within Alberta, per the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission guidelines on lotteries.

The Winnipeg Jets have also adopted the cumulative 50/50 model; their Round 1 jackpot totaled $930,540 with a main prize of more than $820,000 and various early-bid draws before they were eliminated by the Avalanche in Game 5.

"The 50/50 has become part of the game experience in Western Canada," said Dwayne Green, the executive director of the Jets' True North Youth Foundation, which is funded by their 50/50. "People would always stay in the building to hear the 50/50 number, traditionally, before it was all done online. And maybe certain communities would use it to keep more people in the building if it was a lopsided score. We still announce it at our games because lots of people do stay."

Several NHL clubs have adopted the 50/50 draw, but the Western Canadian teams are outliers in size and scope. The Canucks, who opted for per-game 50/50 draws in Round 1, totaled more than $1.2 million in prizes in their first five games against the Predators. For comparison, the 50/50 pots for the Golden Knights' first two home games in Round 1 were $76,000 and $63,000. Regular-season totals underscore the difference even more drastically. The last time the Ducks and Kings met in the 2024 regular season - a Ducks home game in one of North America's most populated regions - the 50/50 sales totaled just $15,010, with the winner taking home $7,505.

Even in Canada, results in the West stand out. The Toronto Maple Leafs gave away just $122,775 in cash 50/50 prizes so far in Round 1. Single jackpots for the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators rarely broke six digits this season. The Toronto Blue Jays are the only team in the East that has generated million-dollar jackpots; they run in-stadium and online sales for single draws spanning multiple games to benefit the Jays Care Foundation.

"I always find that, especially the prairie provinces, in Western Canada … they love to be able to be part of something that turns out to be good," Green said. "And the odds are also pretty good. There are not a lot of lotteries that have odds like there are in the 50/50s that go on at NHL games in Western Canada. And, whether you win or lose, you feel like you've helped."

Who do the funds help?

Tim Adams, who founded Free Play for Kids in Edmonton, echoes Green's suggestion that fans in Western Canada embrace 50/50s because they get a sense they're helping their communities.

"I can remember buying 50/50 tickets at games and knowing the list of charities that were on there and genuinely feeling good about the fact that I have a chance to win a million bucks and someone else has been helped for a good cause," said Adams, whose charity is a recipient of funding from the Oilers' 50/50.

"It's absolutely huge to have a partner like that, who has the ability to help with funding, especially when it's tight. … In the charitable space, most grants, you're lucky if they're a year. So we're constantly fighting and fighting and fighting. And we've had times where I'll go to the crew at the (Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation) and say, 'It's really tight this year and this funding has changed, and that one's changed. Can you help us?' And they've stepped in and helped, so it makes a big difference," he said.

Provincial gaming legislation in Canada mandates that funds raised from lotteries remain in province. National organizations, such as former NHLer Mark Kirton's ALS super fund, direct funds to activities within the province from which they were donated. The Oilers have set aside some 50/50 proceeds for Kirton's work, which he has used to work with neurologists based in Alberta.

"That's probably one of the reasons people are buying tickets, right?" said Kirton, who noted that being able to see who the money is benefiting and knowing it stays local are both part of what donors are looking for in today's charitable landscape.

But information on 50/50 proceeds might not be as clear as fans believe. For example, Charity Intelligence Canada, which monitors the financial transparency of registered Canadian nonprofits, gave the Oilers a C- for their public reporting. It noted that financial statements aren't posted online and have been redacted by the Canada Revenue Agency since 2015. It added that in 2022, after paying out prize money and licensing fees, the charity had just $14.5 million of the $74.1-million lottery revenue, representing only 20% of lottery revenues going to programs.

"It's an expensive program to run," Smith said. "Right out of the gate, half of every dollar that you raise goes out the door to the winner. That's a miserable cost of fundraising. And then you've got your Visa charges and your advertising charges.

"It's tough to use a traditional philanthropy world to measure our performance. When you think about the costs to raise $1, our costs are quite high, because at minimum, even if Visa said, 'We're not going to charge you a penny to sell these things,' our cost is at least 50 cents to $1."

Despite that, he's still a proponent of the 50/50 as a fundraising tool because people get excited about it and contribute. "I'm of the view that as long as the cost of every dollar raised is not greater than $1, and the difference is going back to the community, we should keep going."

The Glace Bay way

Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association might not have the reach of the pros, but what it lacks in geography and population, it's made up for with pure grit. The group has avoided fees that eat into the margins of its NHL counterparts by continuing to sell tickets in cash, and it has kept the cost of each ticket at $1 for 30 years. It now sells over 3 million tickets annually. Three police officers preside over counting funds and tickets every Sunday afternoon during the regular season.

"At Christmastime, there's close to half a million dollars on the table," Edwards said.

"Usually, the winner is local. And if someone wins $50,000, chances are, the entire amount of money that was generated in that week is going to be spent right here in the local area. Whether it's a car dealership or a restaurant or whatever, everybody's going to benefit," he said.

"Any kid who wants to play hockey in the community can," he added. "If it wasn't for the Glace Bay minor hockey 50/50 draw, there's a lot of kids who would not be participating in the game that Canada loves." Because of that, Edwards doesn't foresee the 50/50 in Glace Bay changing any time soon.

"The first rule of hockey is you don't tamper with a winning lineup."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It took Dan Bylsma only 49 games to accomplish what some coaches never get to do: lift the Stanley Cup. When Bylsma replaced Michel Therrien with 25 games left in the Pittsburgh Penguins' 2008-09 regular season, he was the youngest head coach in the league and a first-time NHL bench boss. But a Game 7 win over the Detroit Red Wings in the final capped the team's subsequent turnaround and put Bylsma in a rare club of rookie NHL coaches to win a Stanley Cup.

No one has joined those ranks since. Bylsma is also one of two rookie head coaches to win it all after being a midseason replacement. However, two coaches enter this postseason looking to join Bylsman in that select club. The Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings both turned to NHL coaching neophytes following disappointing starts to the campaign, and they'll face each other in the playoff's opening round starting Monday.

The Oilers finished 46-18-5 under Kris Knoblauch, who the club brought aboard after Jay Woodcroft started 3-9-1. This will be Edmonton's sixth postseason with the league's best player, Connor McDavid, leading the way. The Oilers are hoping Knoblauch has the secret to get them back to the final for the first time since 2006. On the other side, the Kings were 21-12-1 under Jim Hiller after dismissing Todd McLellan in February.

At 53 years old, Bylsma has 15 years of hindsight to reflect on the 2009 season. Following his successful debut, Byslma became the winningest coach in Penguins history and earned the Jack Adams Award in 2011. Currently the head coach of the AHL's Coachella Valley Firebirds, he led the Seattle Kraken's affiliate to Game 7 of the 2023 Calder Cup Finals, losing the championship in overtime. The Firebirds topped the AHL's Pacific Division in the 2023-24 regular season.

When Byslma looks back at that storied run with the Penguins in 2009, the first thing that comes to mind is how fleeting those days were. "In retrospect, it really was such a short period," he said.

But it didn't feel that way while he was going through it. "It's a lot of tension, and there's a lot of emotional roller-coaster rides.

"I was 38 at the time, and I hadn't been a head coach for very long at all," Bylsma said. His first shot at the top position was for the Penguins' AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, working the initial 55 games for the club in the 2008-09 season. "From that standpoint, getting a team with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and getting them in a difficult position where they're out of the playoffs, it was a drinking-from-a-firehose experience."

What Bylsma remembers from those early days is both the privilege and pressure. The Penguins had a stunning amount of talent, boasting a roster that included Crosby and Malkin in their early 20s, future Hall of Fame goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, and defenseman Kris Letang, an eventual All-Star. The squad fell short in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final the previous year against the Red Wings.

"That was a team that maybe had not met expectations to that point," Bylsma said. "But it was a good team with good players, and you don't get that opportunity very often."

The replacements

The NHL favors re-hiring coaches with experience, but it's not uncommon for rookie bench bosses to get their shot when things are going wrong. "Many times, the opportunity to be a coach in the NHL is coming because the team's not in a great spot," Bylsma said. After starting the 2008-09 season 27-25-5 under Therrien, the Penguins sat 10th in the Eastern Conference. With 25 games left to salvage a playoff spot, general manager Ray Shero pivoted to Byslma on Feb. 16.

"When the coaching change was made, we were a long way out of the playoff picture," Bylsma said. "The expectation wasn't necessarily that we had a Stanley Cup team in the dressing room; it was that we were fighting to get into the playoffs to get a chance to do that."

Knowing someone just lost their job can alter a locker room. "Changing the coach hits the players in a unique way," Bylsma said. "I think they all feel some responsibility in the fact that they were the demise of the coach. I think that slap in the face is felt throughout the room, and - whether you call that a reset or not - it gives them some perspective about how they have to change as well.

"I think you get a response from the players because, to a man, they feel somewhat responsible for the situation the team is in with the coach. That's a reflective moment."

It's up to the new bench boss to do his part to capitalize on that energy change. "You're charged with guiding them and getting them into the playoffs," Bylsma said. "It was a difficult situation, but one I was prepared for."

In the Penguins' case, the results came quickly. "As I remember, we certainly started winning a lot of hockey games rather immediately," he said. The team finished 18-3-4 in Bylsma's 25 regular-season contests and lost only once in regulation in 13 matchups in March. Pittsburgh rose to fourth in the standings to set up a first-round matchup with the cross-state rival Philadelphia Flyers. The second round featured the first Crosby-Alex Ovechkin playoff meeting.

Beyond mindset, systems shifts are a midseason replacement coach's best tool. "You're always looking at what you would do differently without voicing that all the time," said Vegas Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy, who replaced Claude Julien on the Boston Bruins' bench in the 2016-17 season. He wasn't a rookie then but hadn't held an NHL head coaching job in 13 years and was looking for a second chance.

"I think when (I took over), there were some things in my head I thought we could do differently that might help the team, and that was just having our DNA a little more involved offensively," Cassidy said.

Those opportunities for coaches are so rare that the only thing Cassidy would change about that first year back as an NHL head coach is simple: "I think I would enjoy the moment a little more sometimes. I think when you're getting your second opportunity, you're so caught up in hockey that you always compartmentalize certain things."

The same could be said for rookie coaches in a similar position. Bylsma's 2009 Penguins were grinding from the day he arrived. "Sometimes they say your team needs to be playing its best hockey when it comes to the playoff time, but we were continually pushing and fighting and scratching and clawing to get into the playoffs, and that carried over," he said. "It carried over to the start of the playoffs and throughout our playoff run."

By the time it was over, the Penguins had secured hockey's top prize, and a 21-year-old Crosby became the youngest captain of a Stanley Cup-winning team.

History repeats itself

A modest parallel to Pittsburgh's situation could be brewing in Edmonton this postseason. Oilers general manager Ken Holland made his coaching change quickly rather than in the last third of the season, but Edmonton boasts a generational superstar and owns the league's best record since making the switch ahead of its 14th game.

Although Knoblauch has a relationship with McDavid as his junior coach in Erie, coming into a team with an established roster as a rookie coach can be challenging. "It's not easy," Oilers forward Zach Hyman said. "I think the key is just to be yourself."

Beyond that, any rookie coach looking to go far needs to mentally prepare to dig in for the long haul. "Over the course of my time in that year of '09, we rode a lot of ups and downs. The playoffs are long and arduous if you are going to win the Stanley Cup," Bylsma said.

He remembered a piece of advice given to him by Mario Lemieux in 2009 when the Penguins trailed the Capitals 0-2 in the Eastern Conference semifinal: "It's a long two months; stay with the process." Pittsburgh won the next three and earned a decisive 6-2 victory on the road in Game 7.

If Bylsma were to go back in time, that'd be the advice he'd repeat to himself. As short as it is in hindsight, it's long when you're living it - especially if you're lucky enough to go all the way.

"I had my head in my hands when he said that to me," Bylsma said. "It turned out to be prophetic. It was a long two and a half months, but I would tell myself to stay with the process, stay with the plan, and ride it out."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer for theScore

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It took Dan Bylsma only 49 games to accomplish what some coaches never get to do: lift the Stanley Cup. When Bylsma replaced Michel Therrien with 25 games left in the Pittsburgh Penguins' 2008-09 regular season, he was the youngest head coach in the league and a first-time NHL bench boss. But a Game 7 win over the Detroit Red Wings in the final capped the team's subsequent turnaround and put Bylsma in a rare club of rookie NHL coaches to win a Stanley Cup.

No one has joined those ranks since. Bylsma is also one of two rookie head coaches to win it all after being a midseason replacement. However, two coaches enter this postseason looking to join Bylsman in that select club. The Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings both turned to NHL coaching neophytes following disappointing starts to the campaign, and they'll face each other in the playoff's opening round starting Monday.

The Oilers finished 46-18-5 under Kris Knoblauch, who the club brought aboard after Jay Woodcroft started 3-9-1. This will be Edmonton's sixth postseason with the league's best player, Connor McDavid, leading the way. The Oilers are hoping Knoblauch has the secret to get them back to the final for the first time since 2006. On the other side, the Kings were 21-12-1 under Jim Hiller after dismissing Todd McLellan in February.

At 53 years old, Bylsma has 15 years of hindsight to reflect on the 2009 season. Following his successful debut, Byslma became the winningest coach in Penguins history and earned the Jack Adams Award in 2011. Currently the head coach of the AHL's Coachella Valley Firebirds, he led the Seattle Kraken's affiliate to Game 7 of the 2023 Calder Cup Finals, losing the championship in overtime. The Firebirds topped the AHL's Pacific Division in the 2023-24 regular season.

When Byslma looks back at that storied run with the Penguins in 2009, the first thing that comes to mind is how fleeting those days were. "In retrospect, it really was such a short period," he said.

But it didn't feel that way while he was going through it. "It's a lot of tension, and there's a lot of emotional roller-coaster rides.

"I was 38 at the time, and I hadn't been a head coach for very long at all," Bylsma said. His first shot at the top position was for the Penguins' AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, working the initial 55 games for the club in the 2008-09 season. "From that standpoint, getting a team with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and getting them in a difficult position where they're out of the playoffs, it was a drinking-from-a-firehose experience."

What Bylsma remembers from those early days is both the privilege and pressure. The Penguins had a stunning amount of talent, boasting a roster that included Crosby and Malkin in their early 20s, future Hall of Fame goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, and defenseman Kris Letang, an eventual All-Star. The squad fell short in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final the previous year against the Red Wings.

"That was a team that maybe had not met expectations to that point," Bylsma said. "But it was a good team with good players, and you don't get that opportunity very often."

The replacements

The NHL favors re-hiring coaches with experience, but it's not uncommon for rookie bench bosses to get their shot when things are going wrong. "Many times, the opportunity to be a coach in the NHL is coming because the team's not in a great spot," Bylsma said. After starting the 2008-09 season 27-25-5 under Therrien, the Penguins sat 10th in the Eastern Conference. With 25 games left to salvage a playoff spot, general manager Ray Shero pivoted to Byslma on Feb. 16.

"When the coaching change was made, we were a long way out of the playoff picture," Bylsma said. "The expectation wasn't necessarily that we had a Stanley Cup team in the dressing room; it was that we were fighting to get into the playoffs to get a chance to do that."

Knowing someone just lost their job can alter a locker room. "Changing the coach hits the players in a unique way," Bylsma said. "I think they all feel some responsibility in the fact that they were the demise of the coach. I think that slap in the face is felt throughout the room, and - whether you call that a reset or not - it gives them some perspective about how they have to change as well.

"I think you get a response from the players because, to a man, they feel somewhat responsible for the situation the team is in with the coach. That's a reflective moment."

It's up to the new bench boss to do his part to capitalize on that energy change. "You're charged with guiding them and getting them into the playoffs," Bylsma said. "It was a difficult situation, but one I was prepared for."

In the Penguins' case, the results came quickly. "As I remember, we certainly started winning a lot of hockey games rather immediately," he said. The team finished 18-3-4 in Bylsma's 25 regular-season contests and lost only once in regulation in 13 matchups in March. Pittsburgh rose to fourth in the standings to set up a first-round matchup with the cross-state rival Philadelphia Flyers. The second round featured the first Crosby-Alex Ovechkin playoff meeting.

Beyond mindset, systems shifts are a midseason replacement coach's best tool. "You're always looking at what you would do differently without voicing that all the time," said Vegas Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy, who replaced Claude Julien on the Boston Bruins' bench in the 2016-17 season. He wasn't a rookie then but hadn't held an NHL head coaching job in 13 years and was looking for a second chance.

"I think when (I took over), there were some things in my head I thought we could do differently that might help the team, and that was just having our DNA a little more involved offensively," Cassidy said.

Those opportunities for coaches are so rare that the only thing Cassidy would change about that first year back as an NHL head coach is simple: "I think I would enjoy the moment a little more sometimes. I think when you're getting your second opportunity, you're so caught up in hockey that you always compartmentalize certain things."

The same could be said for rookie coaches in a similar position. Bylsma's 2009 Penguins were grinding from the day he arrived. "Sometimes they say your team needs to be playing its best hockey when it comes to the playoff time, but we were continually pushing and fighting and scratching and clawing to get into the playoffs, and that carried over," he said. "It carried over to the start of the playoffs and throughout our playoff run."

By the time it was over, the Penguins had secured hockey's top prize, and a 21-year-old Crosby became the youngest captain of a Stanley Cup-winning team.

History repeats itself

A modest parallel to Pittsburgh's situation could be brewing in Edmonton this postseason. Oilers general manager Ken Holland made his coaching change quickly rather than in the last third of the season, but Edmonton boasts a generational superstar and owns the league's best record since making the switch ahead of its 14th game.

Although Knoblauch has a relationship with McDavid as his junior coach in Erie, coming into a team with an established roster as a rookie coach can be challenging. "It's not easy," Oilers forward Zach Hyman said. "I think the key is just to be yourself."

Beyond that, any rookie coach looking to go far needs to mentally prepare to dig in for the long haul. "Over the course of my time in that year of '09, we rode a lot of ups and downs. The playoffs are long and arduous if you are going to win the Stanley Cup," Bylsma said.

He remembered a piece of advice given to him by Mario Lemieux in 2009 when the Penguins trailed the Capitals 0-2 in the Eastern Conference semifinal: "It's a long two months; stay with the process." Pittsburgh won the next three and earned a decisive 6-2 victory on the road in Game 7.

If Bylsma were to go back in time, that'd be the advice he'd repeat to himself. As short as it is in hindsight, it's long when you're living it - especially if you're lucky enough to go all the way.

"I had my head in my hands when he said that to me," Bylsma said. "It turned out to be prophetic. It was a long two and a half months, but I would tell myself to stay with the process, stay with the plan, and ride it out."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer for theScore

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Playoff disappointment came to the Penguins, Flyers, and Red Wings this week, but sometimes those clouds part quickly.

Pittsburgh is out for the second straight year in the Sidney Crosby era, and the New York Islanders squeaked in as the No. 3 team in the Metropolitan Division. The same scenario happened in 1990, but Pittsburgh's short-term disappointment turned into a franchise-altering opportunity.

In that Islanders era, the team was trying to rekindle the magic of its run of four consecutive Stanley Cup victories in the 1980s and reinstalled coach Al Arbour behind the bench midway through the previous season.

"We were just a young team, just trying to figure ourselves out," says Glenn Healy, who was in his first season with the Islanders and is now the president and executive director of the NHL Alumni Association. "We were all trying to make the league or stay in the league."

New York still had a chance to make the playoffs on the final day. The Islanders took care of their business by beating Philadelphia 6-2 to reach 73 points in the standings. If Buffalo, riding in second place in the Prince of Wales Conference, could pull out a win against Mario Lemieux's Penguins, who had 72 points, New York would be in. Islanders players crammed into the bowels of the Nassau Coliseum to watch their fate unfold on TV.

"We didn't have your vaulted television rooms where you can watch team videos and watch tape," Healy says. "We were in this tiny room. It, maybe, sat six comfortably. It had a couch, a chair, and a coffee maker."

He guesses there were about 27 grown men crowded together, hanging on every play. The anticipation and tension were palpable.

The game was tied 2-2 at the end of regulation after Lemieux scored early in the third period. With no shootout back then, a tie would've been enough to put Pittsburgh into the playoffs.

"Both teams were mailing it in," Healy says. "The season was basically over for both. The clock was ticking and our hopes were going with it."

A minute into overtime, seemingly out of nowhere, Buffalo defenseman Uwe Krupp put a shot on net from just inside the blue line. Shockingly, it got by Penguins goalie Tom Barrasso.

"The entire room erupted," Healy says. "Imagine the euphoria of 27 guys all in a room, jumping up and down. We were a playoff-bound team. It was the first time for a lot of those guys to be in the Stanley Cup playoffs."

The Islanders lost in Round 1 against the Rangers, but they had reversed their recent decline that saw them finish with the fewest points in the NHL in 1988-89. It was a pyrrhic victory, though. They didn't know it then, but the biggest twist was still to come.

That overtime loss to Buffalo may have pushed the Penguins out of the playoffs, but it also moved them ahead of the Islanders in the draft order. Only five teams missed the playoffs in the 21-team NHL, so Pittsburgh had the fifth pick while the Islanders had the sixth.

The Penguins used the selection on another generational player to skate alongside Lemieux. Jaromir Jagr went on to play 1,733 NHL games, make seven All-Star appearances, and win two Stanley Cups. The Islanders, meanwhile, selected Scott Scissons, who played just three games due to injuries.

"That's why you tune in, right?" Healy says. "It's not wrestling. I kind of know at the end of Titanic, the ship gets hit with an iceberg. I don't even need to watch the movie, I figured that out. But sports isn't that way."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Playoff disappointment came to the Penguins, Flyers, and Red Wings this week, but sometimes those clouds part quickly.

Pittsburgh is out for the second straight year in the Sidney Crosby era, and the New York Islanders squeaked in as the No. 3 team in the Metropolitan Division. The same scenario happened in 1990, but Pittsburgh's short-term disappointment turned into a franchise-altering opportunity.

In that Islanders era, the team was trying to rekindle the magic of its run of four consecutive Stanley Cup victories in the 1980s and reinstalled coach Al Arbour behind the bench midway through the previous season.

"We were just a young team, just trying to figure ourselves out," says Glenn Healy, who was in his first season with the Islanders and is now the president and executive director of the NHL Alumni Association. "We were all trying to make the league or stay in the league."

New York still had a chance to make the playoffs on the final day. The Islanders took care of their business by beating Philadelphia 6-2 to reach 73 points in the standings. If Buffalo, riding in second place in the Prince of Wales Conference, could pull out a win against Mario Lemieux's Penguins, who had 72 points, New York would be in. Islanders players crammed into the bowels of the Nassau Coliseum to watch their fate unfold on TV.

"We didn't have your vaulted television rooms where you can watch team videos and watch tape," Healy says. "We were in this tiny room. It, maybe, sat six comfortably. It had a couch, a chair, and a coffee maker."

He guesses there were about 27 grown men crowded together, hanging on every play. The anticipation and tension were palpable.

The game was tied 2-2 at the end of regulation after Lemieux scored early in the third period. With no shootout back then, a tie would've been enough to put Pittsburgh into the playoffs.

"Both teams were mailing it in," Healy says. "The season was basically over for both. The clock was ticking and our hopes were going with it."

A minute into overtime, seemingly out of nowhere, Buffalo defenseman Uwe Krupp put a shot on net from just inside the blue line. Shockingly, it got by Penguins goalie Tom Barrasso.

"The entire room erupted," Healy says. "Imagine the euphoria of 27 guys all in a room, jumping up and down. We were a playoff-bound team. It was the first time for a lot of those guys to be in the Stanley Cup playoffs."

The Islanders lost in Round 1 against the Rangers, but they had reversed their recent decline that saw them finish with the fewest points in the NHL in 1988-89. It was a pyrrhic victory, though. They didn't know it then, but the biggest twist was still to come.

That overtime loss to Buffalo may have pushed the Penguins out of the playoffs, but it also moved them ahead of the Islanders in the draft order. Only five teams missed the playoffs in the 21-team NHL, so Pittsburgh had the fifth pick while the Islanders had the sixth.

The Penguins used the selection on another generational player to skate alongside Lemieux. Jaromir Jagr went on to play 1,733 NHL games, make seven All-Star appearances, and win two Stanley Cups. The Islanders, meanwhile, selected Scott Scissons, who played just three games due to injuries.

"That's why you tune in, right?" Healy says. "It's not wrestling. I kind of know at the end of Titanic, the ship gets hit with an iceberg. I don't even need to watch the movie, I figured that out. But sports isn't that way."

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

It was the summer of 1997 and Day 1 of NHL free agency was one minute away from closing. Charlie Lyons, then chairman and CEO of the Colorado Avalanche, was looking forward to a bike trip in the Rockies with his childhood friends while basking in the success of his new side gig as a film producer. His rookie film, "Air Force One" starring Harrison Ford, opened 10 days earlier and sat atop the box office. Not too bad a summer for a guy who spent the preceding offseason celebrating a Stanley Cup victory with the Avalanche.

That's when the call came in.

"Have you heard?" Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla asked. "The New York Rangers just offered Joe Sakic $21 million with $15 million up-front. What have you got to say about that?"

Lyons hadn't heard, and he didn't know what to say.

"There's a lot of things you can do in business, but one thing you can't make up is money in the bank. We did not have that money in the bank," Lyons says in the NHL's new documentary, "Saving Sakic," which revisits the attempt to lure the Avs captain with a restricted free-agent offer sheet.

"I went on a journey to try and find out what happened because no one on the internet and none of the articles I was reading really nailed it, there was a lot of conjecture," said documentary director Jay Nelson, who spent two years tracing the story from the perspective of both the Avalanche and Rangers, who were themselves reacting to the loss of captain Mark Messier to the Vancouver Canucks.

"Making the movie was a surprise the whole way. This was a different time in the NHL," Nelson said. Prime Video members in Canada can access the film starting Tuesday, and it'll be available to ESPN+ subscribers in the U.S. on Wednesday.

In 1997, Ascent Entertainment, the parent company of the Avalanche and the NBA's Denver Nuggets, didn't have the cash on hand to match the Rangers' offer. With only seven days to come up with the money in the pre-salary cap era, Lyons' own hero's quest to keep the Avalanche's biggest star has become the stuff of NHL legend.

As it would happen, Lyons found help from an unexpected source: Hollywood. Beacon Pictures was a sibling company in Ascent's portfolio and one of the producers of "Air Force One." Drawing on business lessons he learned creating the film with Ford, Lyons negotiated a deal that kept Sakic in Denver while also getting a new arena built. Eventually, even Sakic would thank Ford for the roundabout assist.

With Sakic safely tucked away, Colorado went to four conference finals over the next six seasons and won the Stanley Cup again in 2001.

theScore interviewed Lyons - who continues to produce films after Ascent sold the teams in 2000 - about that summer and how he put together the deal to keep Sakic in Colorado.

theScore: When you get bombshell news about the Rangers offering Sakic a $21-million contract, what's your reaction? Was it a moment where your stomach dropped? Or did it bring out your competitive side?

Lyons: The first reaction is you've walked into a punch. And it was a double punch because it didn't come from within. It was Mark Kiszla calling, who was a terrific journalist and seemed to be ahead of every story. He would have been a great Sherlock Holmes, frankly. He just laid me out and said, "What do you have to say about that?"

First I heard of it. I was done for the summer. We had successfully released the film, and I was catching my breath. So, yeah, that's a sucker punch. No question.

What is it about Sakic that made it imperative to keep him in Denver?

We defined a star as not only somebody who performs, but somebody who fits in, and somebody who was an ingredient and the chemistry of the family. Joe was the leader of the team - he was the moral centerpiece.

I'd had a bad experience where a person who I have become very close to in life, Dikembe Mutombo, was poached by the Atlanta Hawks from the Nuggets. To this day, I consider it to be the worst business failure that I was involved with - to lose a player of that caliber, who was so great in the locker room, who was such a fabulous representation of the organization, the community. Joe had all of those qualities. So, you feel like you're losing a son in a way. It gets right to the core of what a team is. There was a real desire to prevent it from happening.

It was overwhelming. You feel so much responsibility for everybody else, and you feel enormously deficient that something like this could even happen.

In the face of that chaos, how did you snap into action?

You have to deal with what is on your plate. So you take a step back: the money's not in the bank, if everything stays the same he's going to go.

You think, even though you have a hit motion picture, that's your other company. Those resources are intended to make films. But what "Air Force One" did is - when you have something that's that successful, it gives you confidence that you can solve problems, and you can get things done.

Then, you just catch your breath for a moment and say, 'OK, what's possible here?' There were three moving pieces. One is: We've got to be able to say to the community, and say to Joe and say to the world, that there's going to be a state-of-the-art facility to play in. That's also a statement for the fans.

The second part was: Maybe there's somebody in town that might come in and become a small partner right now because it appeals to them. That was Liberty Media. They have great civic pride, so they were happy to come to the rescue.

And the third was the expiring Fox (national TV) agreement. Those are big television rights for teams. They are very, very important. So to get a little bit of an advance and cement that - don't waste a crisis.

At the end of the week, when everything was secured and you knew Sakic was staying, you must have felt great about pulling it all together.

I felt good. But I also felt that, wow, we're pretty vulnerable. This can't go on, there are no more new arenas or sales or partial sales. The idea that you'd have to do things that affect the future in order to conduct business today was a sobering aspect. We got through it and we got a lot of things done, and that's really great. But there was also that sobering reality that we may be too small for what is going to happen in this business.

I love Denver, I feel an enormous personal connection to the people. I love Colorado. As a matter of fact, I live in Colorado. I have to work in Los Angeles and am on sets all over the place. But my domicile is Colorado. So I have huge civic pride and I love the city. So it's more personal, you know what I mean? It's the human connections that are so great.

What do you think about the way the NHL has evolved since the 1990s when stars were at greater risk of being poached?

Gary Bettman has done such a terrific job. I don't think he gets the credit he deserves. He came into a very established culture. I got to know him when I was involved with the NBA. He was great at what he did there. So I had no doubt when he got over to the NHL, he was gonna bring all that energy.

Here's what's changed, I think, for the better. When he got there, you could see the energy and the upswing in the development of the league. But what you're seeing with this particular incident, and ironically with myself and my company, was the days were over for small entrepreneurs trying to do this. You've seen the stories come out about Jerry Buss that everybody thought, 'What was behind the curtain on the Lakers?' Well, they didn't have the financial resources. That's sort of been taken care of in Denver.

The teams in Denver are so much better off now than they were when they were run by people like us. Because the resources are so deep, no one would ever contemplate trying to steal somebody with resources as the weapon. That would be just idiotic. This was an utter act of madness, but totally understandable, given what David (Checketts, then president and CEO of Madison Square Garden) was going through in New York. He lost a guy like Messier. He was just getting clobbered there.

My situation - it was a publicly traded company. There was the tension that sports is not a quarter-to-quarter business and public companies are. So, you have this awful disconnect. Investors are looking for short-term rewards and short-term profits. It's the whole tension of: are these companies better public or private? I don't think there's any question they're better private, frankly. At the end of the day, the economic motivations are very different for a high net-worth family than they are for a publicly traded company and people in those management roles.

And then, plus the fact that all the changes made in hockey afterwards, like putting a cap in.

Has Sakic ever thanked Harrison Ford for his role in keeping him in Denver?

Yeah, he has. He hasn't had the chance to meet him personally because Harrison's actually the busiest he's ever been in his life now. But he did thank him, he was hysterical.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The NBA's investigation into Jontay Porter for betting irregularities is the most high profile such case in North American sports in more than a decade, and it raises questions about the legal penalties athletes may face.

ESPN reported March 25 that Porter was being investigated by the league for a type of match manipulation sometimes referred to as spot-fixing. Two of Porter's performances - Jan. 26 and March 20 - triggered the probe. In both cases, Porter left the game early, resulting in his points, rebounds, and 3-pointers falling significantly under the prop bet over-under lines available to bettors.

Leagues and teams can ban or suspend athletes or other insiders who are found to have contravened betting policies. But legal punishments are a more complex issue.

Jeremy Luke, president and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, said his team is leading a charge to make match-fixing illegal and criminal. Currently, there are no federal laws in either Canada or the United States specifically criminalizing competitive manipulation in sports.

"Leagues themselves have policies in place to deal with issues like this," Luke said. "If someone does something that would violate that policy, the league would be investigating that particular issue. And these leagues have ways to be able to monitor betting lines and have any irregularities reported to them, and the ability to investigate these types of things. They ultimately have the ability to take action and from a sport perspective to prohibit individuals from participating in their sports."

Laying criminal charges in such cases wouldn't be straightforward because of the laws on the books in both countries.

"In this particular case with Porter, it would have to be proven that he intentionally influenced the outcome of the bets on him with the intent of benefiting from it," Ben Michael, an attorney at M&A Criminal Defense Attorneys in Austin, Texas, wrote in an email to theScore. "Though it may seem clear that this is what he did to most people, actually proving his actions and intent may not be so easy."

Financial and health records, in addition to personal communications, will be vital if evidence of any wrongdoing is to be proven.

The NBA has had no further comment on its investigation, and it's not clear whether any law-enforcement agencies in Canada or the U.S. are also looking into the matter. The Canadian Press reported March 26 that Toronto police were not looking into the matter.

Sportradar Integrity Services, a branch of the global data services company, reported in March that it found 1,329 suspicious matches in 11 sports around the world in 2023, which represented just 0.5% of competitions. Only 35 of those irregular findings happened in North America.

Betting irregularities are not just the domain of teams and leagues. ESPN reported that DraftKings said prop bets on Porter, who averages only 14 minutes a game, in the two games flagged were the biggest winning prop bets of the night.

Sports betting became legal under federal law in the U.S. in 2018 after a Supreme Court ruling struck down a 1992 law called the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. Individual states have since enacted their own frameworks to regulate the industry. Betting is legal now in 38 states.

Canada's law was amended in 2021 to allow single-game betting. Only one province, Ontario, has opened a regulated market to betting companies. Other provinces have government-run betting operations within their lottery commissions.

The advent of legal sports betting in North America means integrity issues will crop up more often. "With that comes great risks of competition manipulation, both the outcome of competitions, but also component parts of competitions that people are wagering on," Luke said. "It's a very, very serious issue."

The increase in popularity of prop bets has underscored the risk of spot-fixing in particular. "It's not specific to the outcome of a competition and trying to fix the outcome," Luke added.

Jurisdictions worldwide grapple with how best to address match-fixing. In 2014, European nations adopted the Macolin Convention - currently the only rule of international law on the subject of match-fixing. Nine European nations have ratified it and 32 more have signed the treaty. Australia and Morocco are also signatories.

"What that convention does is that it requires governments to put in place regulatory approaches to protect the integrity of competitions and to make sure that any issues related to manipulation can be reported, that they can be identified, and that they can be investigated, so that the public can have confidence in our support system and we can also know that we're protecting the health and safety of our athletes," Luke said. "It speaks to how significant an issue it is, when there's an international convention signed on by over 30 different countries."

Other jurisdictions have developed homegrown solutions. Germany amended its criminal code in 2017 to address betting fraud in sports and the manipulation of professional sports competitions. This amendment was passed in response to a 2005 match-fixing scandal involving a German football referee.

In North America, there are no specific provisions in U.S. or Canadian federal law to directly address match-fixing or spot-fixing. In Canada, the "cheating at play" provision of Section 209 of the Criminal Code is perhaps the closest legislation on the books. It is worded to include, "Everyone who, with the intent to defraud any person, cheats while playing a game …" However, it's thought that professional sporting events would not fall under the legal definition of a "game" because they do not involve the required amount of chance.

"The challenge for us in Canada is that we are far behind what those other countries have put in place. While we recently legalized all that sports betting and people are becoming more and more familiar with the issue, the reality is other countries have done a lot to protect their athletes and it's incumbent on us to be doing the same right now," Luke said. Over the last five years, his organization has held two symposiums on match-fixing, and has openly called on the Canadian government to adopt the Macolin Convention.

In the U.S., the federal Sports Bribery Act makes it a felony to bribe anyone involved in a sporting event to intentionally influence the outcome. But there is no provision for cases where trainers, referees, coaches, or athletes may be influencing games without payment from others.

In one of the few American precedents, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in a gambling scandal. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and transmitting wagering information but wasn't charged for betting on games or affecting outcomes. If an athlete was charged with an offense related to match-fixing or spot-fixing, prosecutors would likely have to prove the more general fraud charge.

Criminal fraud may not be the only legal trouble awaiting an athlete. Chicago-area attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld said an athlete may face disciplinary action from regulators in the form of a fine. "Sports betting regulations, established by governmental authorities or regulatory bodies, often prohibit actions that compromise the fairness of betting outcomes," Rosenfeld wrote in an email.

An athlete also could face civil liabilities. "Affected parties, such as betting agencies or sponsors, may pursue legal action to recover damages resulting from the misconduct," Rosenfeld said. This is all in addition to league sanctions and contract termination, which are likely if the allegations are proven.

The NFL and NHL have taken such actions for other infractions of their codes of conduct. Three NFL players last season were suspended for six games for betting on other sports inside their team facilities. Nine others have been handed minimum one-year suspensions for betting on NFL games since 2019. Several of those players had their contracts terminated by their teams.

Shane Pinto of the Ottawa Senators was suspended for half the current NHL season for violating the league's gambling policy. It was found he didn't bet on NHL games, although no further details were provided.

Luke believes that beyond criminalizing match-fixing, the best solution is for all sports to adopt a system similar to what the World Anti-Doping Association uses to penalize athletes who use banned substances.

"I'd like to see a sport system where we treat competition manipulation at the same level and with the same severity that we do doping issues, where we have a global regulator, we have a very sophisticated set of rules, we have organizations that have been set up specifically with a mandate to deal with those things and to investigate them," Luke said.

"I think we will see more and more cases like this. And we need the systems in place to be able to protect the integrity of our sports and health for athletes."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

If things went right for Don Gallinger, he might have been remembered by history as a 17-year-old star who leapfrogged from Junior B to the NHL and became good enough to lead the Boston Bruins in scoring following World War II. But it's not how he entered the league that he's remembered for - it's how he left.

"There's absolutely no redemption in this story. But that's the real story," says hockey historian Fred Addis, who recently wrote "Gallinger: A Life Suspended," a book about Gallinger's fall from grace. "Once he fell off that pedestal, boy, he wasn't likable," Addis says.

In 1948, Gallinger was handed an indefinite suspension from the NHL when it was discovered he'd been betting on Bruins games, along with teammate Billy Taylor. That cloud followed Gallinger's name ever since.

Initially, Gallinger had all the hallmarks of a hero. When he first laced up his skates and took the ice for the Bruins in 1942, he was the youngest player to ever skate in the NHL at 17 years, 6 months, and 22 days old. By the end of that season, he placed third in voting for the Calder Trophy as the league's best rookie. During the Bruins' playoff run, his overtime goal against the Montreal Canadiens earned him the record for youngest player ever to score in overtime during the NHL playoffs, a distinction he still holds.

Gallinger's hockey career was interrupted in 1944 when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent 22 months in military service, but he returned to the Bruins in 1945 and led the team in scoring.

That positive trajectory all came crashing down a few short years later when Gallinger played a role in a scheme that saw him bet on NHL games and also bet against his own team. In the fall of 1947, Taylor approached Gallinger with an offer: Taylor had a contact who'd guarantee 2-1 odds on any bet placed through him; in exchange, the two players needed to supply their contact with insider info on Bruins injuries and other intelligence not available to the public. The only catch: to prove the quality of their information, Gallinger and Taylor had to place bets on the Bruins themselves, even if it meant they'd be betting on the Bruins to lose.

It wasn't long before the plot was uncovered and Gallinger was suspended.

"I don't know that he would have turned out any differently. If he'd been given another chance on a reinstatement, he may have just gone right back and offended again. He was a confident, cocky person and it was hard to tell him just about anything," says Addis, the past president of the Society for International Hockey Research who's spent years digging deeper into Gallinger's fate.

Despite what he uncovered, Addis believes the NHL's handling of Gallinger's case was heavy-handed, and that the story is particularly relevant in today's sports betting environment. "The more I study this, the more I believe that Gallinger himself was predisposed to gambling. The higher the stakes, the better," he says. "It's easy to advocate for the hero; it's a little more difficult to suggest that someone who had a lot of trouble perhaps deserved a little bit more consideration."

theScore recently talked with Addis about Gallinger's story. (The interview's been edited for length and clarity.)

theScore: Out of all the stories you've come across in your work as a hockey historian, why did you write a book about this one?

Addis: I knew the subject. I knew Don Gallinger myself. I lived in a little town called Port Colborne in Ontario. And it was there that Gallinger played his minor hockey and then graduated to the NHL.

Gallinger was a larger-than-life story: his rocket ascent into the National Hockey League at the age of 17, right out of Junior B hockey, had never been done before. But you hear everything about a person in a small community. Some people said he was reckless, some people called him an idiot. Some people called him worse than that. This was all mostly based on the fact that he was suspended. But those that really knew him well spoke of him with a degree of respect, because they knew just how incredibly talented he was. And secondly, they knew all that he'd lost when he was suspended from the NHL.

The story of Don Gallinger was largely written by the NHL: he was a cheat and he got exactly what he deserved. But the story is much more nuanced and complex than that.

Q: Can you describe the type of player Gallinger was?

First of all, he was big: 6-foot-1. Especially hockey players in the '40s and '50s - there weren't many guys that were six-foot. He was incredibly fast. A heck of a playmaker, and probably one of the biggest assets that he possessed: he was supremely confident.

He was absolutely fearless and demonstrated that fearlessness right from the get-go, when he was at training camp with the Bruins at 17.

Q: Gallinger entered the league during World War II, when many players were serving in the armed forces overseas. How did he stack up against those who returned to the NHL after the war?

He made the club and he did extremely well in his first year. He scored an overtime goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs, Game 1 against Montreal. The following year, his season was interrupted when he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He enlisted in the service of his king and country and came back after the war in the '45-46 season and led the team in scoring.

This was after all of the greats of the team had returned from war service themselves. It was thought that these young players that came on during wartime as basically wartime substitutes wouldn't be able to make the grade when the other athletes returned from their war service, but Gallinger stuck with it, hung in there, and he not only stayed with the team, he led them in scoring.

Q: When did Gallinger get into betting on NHL games?

In September of 1947, his best friend and teammate Bep Guidolin was traded to the Detroit Red Wings for a gentleman by the name of Billy Taylor. Now, Taylor had come up through the Toronto Maple Leafs system and had been shipped off to Detroit, where he led them in scoring the year before. Almost out of the blue he was traded to the Bruins and moved right into the same rooming house as Gallinger. Taylor was 28 and Gallinger was 22 and somewhat impressionable.

Taylor had a reputation for being a gambler and Gallinger liked that about him and aspired to be the same thing. He basically was taken into Taylor's confidence, which included being introduced to one of Taylor's contacts from Detroit, James Tamer, who was a convicted bank robber out on parole. Tamer had organized a gambling syndicate in Detroit through a couple of restaurants that he owned, and some other entities.

Q: In order for the scheme to work, there were instances where Gallinger and Taylor had to bet against themselves and the Bruins. Was there any indication they wrestled with the ethics of that?

Gallinger and I never spoke about that directly before his death in 2000. He left some manuscript materials that suggested they weren't overly concerned about it. I was able to establish in the Boston media itself (that) there were a number of columns that said there's no problem with betting on yourself or betting on your own team. In fact, it was considered a mark of confidence on the part of an athlete.

Gambling was enforced at various levels in the various NHL cities of the day, and some police departments were a little more lenient, others were a little more heavy-handed. Certainly, in Boston, it wasn't considered a big deal.

Sports reporters were always complaining about gamblers basically hawking their wares at Fenway Park in Boston during baseball games and at the Boston Garden during Bruins games. So, I think you could say it was an accepted part of the sports culture. But as far as betting against your own team, I think everyone understood that would be considered crossing the line.

Q: How did the whole house of cards come crashing down on Gallinger?

In the fall of 1947, Taylor and Gallinger, then teammates on the Bruins, set up an arrangement whereby Taylor would place the bets for or against (the team). He would make those bets directly with Tamer in Detroit. So, he was the pipeline.

Early in February 1948, Taylor was traded to the New York Rangers, so that direct contact with Detroit no longer existed. But the next game that Boston played in Detroit, after the game in a restaurant, Tamer approached Gallinger and personally gave him his phone number and said, "Don't worry, nobody answers this phone but me."

With that number, a couple of weeks later, while the team was in Chicago, Gallinger placed the bet through Tamer, and - on the one and only time that Gallinger placed the bet - the Detroit police had Tamer's phone wiretapped.

Although it was never proven it was Gallinger on the other end of the line - in other words, he never identified himself, said his name, or gave any clue as to his identity - (NHL) president Clarence Campbell was so concerned about removing any specter of betting out of the game that he pursued a private investigation on behalf of the league.

The Detroit police and the governor of Michigan had absolutely no interest in prosecuting charges. As far as they were concerned, all the evidence against Gallinger and Taylor was entirely circumstantial, it would never stand up in the court of law. But of course, the NHL had no interest in taking the case to court. They were just going to keep these two individuals out of the game for as long as possible, and therefore, they were suspended.

Q: What was happening culturally at the time that made gambling such an important issue for the league?

It was postwar America and they were perhaps hyper-concerned with guaranteeing that the American way of life was preserved. This is what they fought the war for. This is why thousands of men had died overseas: to preserve the American perception of the good life and life in a democracy. Gambling had no place in that life.

It should be noted that the previous sentence or suspension for gambling in the NHL in Gallinger's time was to a gentleman by the name of Babe Pratt, who was at that time a defenseman for the Maple Leafs. He was suspended for betting on NHL games, though with a different NHL president, but he was suspended. He got six games and (a) nine days suspension, something like that. You might think, a year and a half later, Gallinger might reasonably expect to maybe get the rest of the season or the playoffs, something of that nature, maybe one season. But to have been suspended for more than 20 years, I think by anybody's definition, appears to have been draconian.

Q: Can you talk about the fallout in Gallinger's life after he was suspended?

It was immediate. He was suspended in March of 1948. Previous to that, in addition to playing hockey, he had tryouts with the Boston Red Sox and with the Boston Braves, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics, all Major League Baseball teams. They all wanted to sign him to minor-league contracts but Gallinger wasn't interested because he was making major-league money in hockey. That gives you a sense of the kind of athlete he was.

Taylor was suspended for life immediately but Gallinger's was an indefinite suspension until further investigation, so he was kind of in limbo. He thought naturally, 'Alright, if I can't play hockey, I'll play baseball.' But he found out pretty quickly that those offers dried up. Basically, he'd become a bit of a pariah. Nobody wanted to touch him with a 10-foot pole. So, he didn't know what he was going to do.

(Gallinger was eventually invited to play for and manage the Waterloo Tigers of the Intercounty Baseball League, a regional semipro league in southwestern Ontario.)

During that time, he appealed to the NHL for reinstatement. He had an in-person appeal with a lawyer present and they were almost certain to have had the suspension lifted had a vote been taken. But Campbell intervened when the directors looked like they were going to vote in favor of reinstating Gallinger and his reinstatement was squashed.

In 1963, Scott Young, the father of famous Canadian musician Neil Young, was writing for The Globe and Mail and ran a three-part series basically advocating for Gallinger and saying it was time his suspension be lifted. It was 15 years by that time, and still, the NHL hadn't budged.

It wasn't until 1970, after some inner turmoil in the NHL, that the suspension was lifted. Conn Smythe, who was by then the retired manager and owner of the Maple Leafs, (saw) his own son was in trouble with the police and it looked like he might be charged, in terms of charges relating to the shareholders of Maple Leaf Gardens. Smythe's son passed away before the charges were laid. Consequently, it was thought that Smythe, seeing what had happened to his own son, called the NHL office and said it's time to clear Gallinger and Taylor.

The suspension had gone on for 22 years. Gallinger had been married, had four children, and his marriage broke up as a result of it. He tried many different businesses. But always, the same thing happened when push came to shove: he just didn't have the capital and resources to carry through with them. He was considered somewhat of an outsider and an untouchable based on his reputation from the charges in the NHL. Eventually, he moved to California. No one knew where he was when the NHL tried to reinstate him. A letter was sent to one of his old employers in the hope they might be able to track him down. He was applying for a job in the classifieds in L.A. The person who he was calling said, 'Are you the same Don Gallinger who just had his suspension lifted by the NHL?' First time he'd heard of it.

Q: Why is Gallinger's story relevant today?

I think it's a story worth telling especially because of the prevalence of access to online gambling. It tells the story of someone who was hurt by their addiction to betting on sports.

I think one of the primary concerns is not the fact that there is gambling and sports betting - of course, that's part of our contemporary culture, that's never going to go away. I think the lesson is that, despite the broad spectrum of the population that appears to be interested in sports betting, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that there are people who fall through the cracks and fall by the wayside. And consequently, some considerations should be made for them.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

In hockey's early days, a suit did the trick. "It was throughout the league, everybody dressed up," says Gerald McNamara, who began his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs as a practice goaltender in the late 1950s before becoming a scout for the team and then general manager in 1981. "When they came to games, they had to come with a shirt and tie. When we went on the road, they had to have a shirt and tie. And on the plane to come home, they might loosen their ties."

While those ties might be getting looser every year - or disappearing completely - the concept is immutable: "If I feel good going into a game, that always makes a difference," says Bruins forward David Pastrnak, who carries the sartorial mantle in today's NHL.

Today's stars are increasingly seeing beyond the letter of the law - codified in team dress codes - to its spirit, upheld by generations of the league's greatest dressers, from Brendan Shanahan to Henrik Lundqvist to Sean Avery. They're playing within the dress code to redefine what looking your best means.

"My favorite (way to change it up) is probably just the color of the suit, and I sometimes match it with shoes or a hat," Pastrnak says.

It's a balancing of tradition and modernity, and it's helping today's athletes take that step toward giving fans something they've long been asking for: a little personality.

"My mom said I was always like this as a kid," says Pastrnak, which is a lot more backstory than you usually hear from an active NHL player in a media availability.

Legacy of looking good

The idea of looking your best when showing up at the rink isn't new. An element of sophistication has been part of a hockey player's gameday mystique since the sport's early days.

"In those days, that was the dress code and everybody had to toe the line - let's put it that way - because they could give you two weeks' notice and you were out of your contract," says McNamara.

Conn Smythe, who owned and founded the Maple Leafs, ran a notoriously tight ship. McNamara still remembers arriving at one of his early Leafs practices as a backup goalie and stumbling into a team meeting in progress. The players were attempting to unionize.

"The kid should hear this stuff too," Smythe told Leafs trainer Tim Daly, who led McNamara into the fold.

Smythe pointed to the wall where plaques dedicated to winning Leafs squads hung. "There's my record," he said.

"But you can't eat records," retorted Tod Sloan, who by that point had amassed a 10-season tenure with Toronto. Sloan was summarily traded to Chicago.

Smythe didn't tolerate dissent - not with unions and not with the dress code. No shirt, no tie, no hockey. Flouting the dress code for any reason was unthinkable. He even extended the requirement to fans, especially those in the more expensive seats.

While not every team went as far as to require its fans to arrive looking dapper, the players' dress code wasn't isolated to the Maple Leafs. For a lot of NHLers, wearing a suit felt like a distinction. "There was great pride in it," says Tracy Wilson, whose dad, Johnny Wilson, once held the NHL ironman streak and won four Cups with the Red Wings in the 1950s. "It's not like these guys made a lot of money in the NHL at that point. But it was surely better than working as a factory worker or digging ditches. I remember my dad told me about getting suits made. He wanted to look sharp. The mindset was: you wanted to look like a professional."

While the method may be changing, the mindset is the same: players want to look like they're ready to work.

Today's craftsmen

J.F. Bedard will never forget the frantic call he and his business partner received from Nick Suzuki on the eve of NHL media day in 2022, when the newly named Canadiens captain arrived in Las Vegas to meet the press without his luggage, which was lost somewhere in airline limbo. "I have a hoodie and shorts and 10 interviews before 10 a.m. tomorrow," Suzuki told the two tailors, who head up Glorius Custom, a brand that's become a go-to among players looking for a perfect-fitting suit.

"All of the stores were closed," says Bedard. "But we had a pair of jeans that were going to be delivered to another client. I gave them to Nick to try on."

"Are you kidding me? These pants fit," Suzuki said.

"OK, give me five seconds, I need to make a call," Bedard replied.

"Why?" asked Suzuki.

"Because they're Crosby's pants," said Bedard, as he dialed the Penguins' star to ask if his custom outfit could be diverted. That's how the Canadiens captain ended up at media day in Sidney Crosby's clothes.

Bedard recounted the story because to him it epitomizes the importance of fashion for today's modern players. "Fashion is very strong in the NHL right now. The guys need to be sharp."

Acquiring a well-fitting suit is a process that requires something today's top athletes intrinsically understand: attention to detail. Bedard flies across the continent to perform the intimately AI-proof task of measuring them in person. "The best-case scenario is that we take the measurements because it is an art. For our business, the most important part is the measurements," says Bedard, who notes that if a player's body changes, measurements have to be retaken. "Hockey players have big thighs and slim waists, it's super hard to make some cuts - like the slim fit - work with their proportions," he says.

Custom suits - the personalization, the artistry, the handiwork - aren't going anywhere, he thinks. He designs looks for many minor-league athletes now, and more than a handful of players at the draft. "It's in their head: when they put on the suit, the shirt, and a tie, it's like a ritual," he says.

Of course, a tailor would say that. The NHL dress code, enshrined in the collective bargaining agreement, is good for business. But it's not just that. "I've always loved the dress code," says designer Tom Marchitelli, who dresses today's top stars across the NHL, NFL, MLB, and NBA. "Not just for my business, but because it adds a certain respect and class that the players bring to the sport."

While some have decried the confines of the dress code in today's age, Marchitelli doesn't see it as a style-killer. Guys like William Nylander, Auston Matthews, and Pastrnak are finding unique ways to color within the lines. "There's a ton of style in the NHL today, there's just different degrees of style and how different people interpret that word," he says.

"When you look at the way NFL players dress, each guy wants to be flashier than the next. They want to have fabrics and fits that you see from a mile away. That's because the personality of the football guy typically is that way. A hockey guy is typically more reserved. I think it's just more of a reflection of the personality of the athlete by sport."

When NHLers do want to showcase their personal style, team social media strategists are starting to help by posting real-time photos of players arriving to the rink in their fits. "You get to see them coming in and it makes them more human and more relatable. That inspires someone who goes to work in a suit every day to do something a little different to emulate them," says Marchitelli.

Some athletes prefer to stay on the safe side of Marchitelli's tastes. "I'm probably one of his more conservative clients," says Stars netminder Jake Oettinger, who was fitted by Marchitelli for the first time for this year's All-Star Game. But Marchitelli does have clients on his roster whose big personalities announce themselves in their fits.

"I can't think of more than three or four hockey players that would even attempt to put that thing on and try to pull it off," Marchitelli says of a suit he made for Evander Kane that the Oiler debuted in late 2023, pictured below. "That is a bold, badass man. I regard Evander as one of the best-dressed players in all of sports."

"I put a lot of thought into the suits I make for myself and wear. There's certain games you kind of pick out different suits for," says Kane. "There's a few guys who take pride in their appearance and try to add a bit more style into it. You're seeing them more around the league. A few years ago, I started wearing sneakers with my suit, no tie, button the dress shirt all the way up, you know, just different things. And I see some more guys doing that now."

Roll out the red carpet

Today's athletes, fans, and even front offices still want players to look put together when they come to the rink, but they aren't necessarily stuck on a suit and tie being the highest interpretation of what that means. What looks and feels professional today is taking on a new definition, in part due to a gradual, culture-wide inclination towards casual, and also partially due to the influence of other major sports on hockey culture.

"The pandemic bubble has broken down a lot of the dress code for the NHL," says Kesha McLeod, who now serves as Sherwood's in-house fashion director after a successful career styling athletes like Serena Williams and James Harden. "We got to see how expressive guys were and what they were wearing - not only just suits, but in casual wear. In what their interpretation was, we got to see a lot of personalities," she says.

"I really like now that people are taking chances. If we're going to have a dress code, to have fun with colors, textures, and to keep it exciting."

McLeod remembers being on the ground during what she described as the "original tunnel walk" days of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, when the Miami Heat turned the act of showing up at the arena into what she calls "the new red carpet" after the NBA instituted its dress code in 2005 requiring players to arrive in business casual attire. This channeled the fashion sensibilities NBA players are known for into menswear, transforming the category.

"Being one of the originators of the NBA tunnel walk and seeing the progress of that tunnel from 2006 to now - I think eventually the NHL finally got to it and saw that it was something exciting," she says. "The NHL is just capitalizing on that and embracing the players that they have."

Sherwood has branded itself on the hunch that style will be integral to engaging a new generation of fans who don't dress like their grandparents. "We started to look at the young kids coming into the sport and the influence that other sports have on hockey and hockey players. It is immense," says Brendon Arnold, Sherwood's associate vice president of brand. "You look at the NBA, you look at the NFL, you look at golf, you look at all these other sports: they have started to evolve over time and leverage creativity and individuality and self-expression and plug it into their sports," he says.

"That makes this a better game, it makes it a bigger game, you start attracting more people, you start attracting different types of people to the game that may not have even considered it because they may have believed it was stuck back in the old ages of what it used to be. Hockey is now becoming a more relevant sport with the youth because they're starting to see athletes and players and teams that resemble themselves and their values," Arnold adds.

Living by a new code

When you talk to today's on-ice leaders about values that represent hockey, they don't sound too different from the game's originators almost a century ago.

"It's a very gritty sport. You've got to really work hard," says Ducks forward Max Jones.

What's changed is the way that sentiment is expressed. Instead of suits and ties, those values are embodied in brands like cult classic Violent Gentlemen, started in 2011 in Southern California by Mike Hammer and Brian Talbert, who came from a music and action sports background.

"The hard work tied to Violent Gentlemen, the grit to their brand, is what attracts a lot of people," says Ducks forward Frank Vatrano. He recently modeled for the company in its newest lifestyle campaign announcing its biggest partnership to date, with Ebbets Field Flannels. "People in the hockey community can be really blue collar and I think that's what their company represents," Vatrano says.

"The stuff they make is more of a streetwear-type brand," says Jones, who also modeled alongside Vatrano for the campaign. "I feel like it represents hockey players a lot."

That new expression of the same values has worked its way up to front offices, some of which have experimented with loosening restrictions on dress codes since the pandemic. In 2021, Arizona took the league-leading approach of completely relaxing its gameday dress code in a move designed to connect more directly with fans.

"We have to tap into fans any way they can relate," says Xavier Gutierrez, Coyotes president and CEO. The team's focus is not just on its existing fan base, but on what Gutierrez calls "fans in waiting."

"A central effort around that is to leverage content, experiences, and culture. Fashion, music, and food really engage these fans in waiting," he explains.

To be sure, the Coyotes have received some recent criticism about their arena issues. But the franchise appears to have turned a corner on the ice, and it's collected a lot of positive feedback from players since initiating the clothing policy changes. "It's great that guys get to show their personality a little more in the way they dress," forward Liam O'Brien says.

"I really enjoyed in Arizona showing up wearing whatever I wanted," says Senators defenseman Jakob Chychrun, who got a taste of the no-dress-code life before he was traded from the Coyotes to Ottawa last year. "I think you just come out feeling good about yourself. A little bit of swagger, a little bit of confidence. Confidence is everything. If you can get a little bit extra out of picking something that you think looks good out of your closet, all the power to you," he says.

While Conn Smythe might have grown his fan base through a monoculture of suits and ties, more people today see variety as the path forward.

"Personality is how community is built," Violent Gentlemen's Hammer says. "Obviously we're all here because we like hockey. That's a given. But what other common ground is there? Those more connective things, like favorite brands and fashion, are just going to connect the fans more and more to the players, and that's great for everybody," he says. "That pushes the whole sport forward."

Chychrun summed it up: "Hockey players are such genuine people," he says. "I don't think what you wear should determine whether or not we are professionals. I'm always an advocate for dropping the dress code, letting guys express themselves, doing whatever we can to grow the game."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.