My journey to The Dark Side: from NHL team member to media member

Jul 15, 2022

My journey to The Dark Side: from NHL team member to media member

Although my nightclub days are mostly over, I still remember the feeling of not wanting the party to end when the lights would suddenly come on and the bouncer would say it’s time to go. It’s kind of how I feel about the amazing 2021-22 NHL season now that we’ve turned the page to the 2022-23 season. It’s also how I felt on that fateful day in December when my time as Assistant GM and Chief Legal Officer of the Vancouver Canucks came to an unceremonious end.

It was a good gig, one that I valued and cherished, and one that I think I was pretty good at. To be a business and hockey executive for the biggest pro team in my home city for 12 years is something I will always be grateful for and proud of. But all good things come to an end. And as the legendary ’90s band Semisonic once sang, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.

I never pictured myself in the media, never wanted to be part of the media, even abhorred the media at times. And yet, here we are. Along the way, I discovered it isn’t so bad. In fact, it can be a lot of fun. I haven’t decided whether this foray to the dark side will continue, but I am truly grateful that the opportunity arose and that I chose to give it a try. Not only did I learn an awful lot about the business and the people who work in it, but I learned a lot about myself.

Let’s back up for a moment. I’d never been someone that had faced much adversity when it came to my career. I had been lucky enough to get great jobs in my chosen field and to leave those jobs on my terms. After my first seven years with the Canucks, I was asked to take on a dual role with hockey and business ops responsibilities. Who wouldn’t want to negotiate player contracts instead of supply and service contracts? When I became AGM a few years later, I still kept the business responsibilities (the only AGM in the league with such a portfolio), and I even kept my role as Governor of the lacrosse team. I was spread thin and could have used extra hands, but I made it work. I was living the dream.

In making the transition from a purely business position to a hockey operations position, I knew I would be more squarely in the line of fire and that my ultimate fate would be tied to the fortunes of the team more than my work alone. My wagon would be hitched to the hockey management group as a whole, regardless of the limits of my sphere of influence or the thoughts and positions I individually held. It was a public role without much of a public face. Fans in the market likely knew me by name only, just one guy in a management team they eventually wanted replaced. That’s a helpless feeling.

It’s a team game, and I was willing to accept my share of the blame when the time came, and yet, somehow I thought my years on the business side of the organization would shield me from the carnage or demonstrate a utility that would not as easily be purged. Even though I had witnessed countless firings in the game and in the organization, it wouldn’t happen to me, right?

And so it came as a shock and disappointment when those lights came on and the bouncer asked me to leave. In a heartbeat, I went from someone who thought, rightly or wrongly, that I might someday merit consideration for the big chair to someone who didn’t have a chair at all.

I won’t lie, it hit me hard and knocked me down. I could finally relate to all those that had come and gone before me. Former Canucks and current Maple Leafs executive Laurence Gilman had once told me hockey executives are hired to be fired. At least I had lots of company.

It wasn’t that my ego was bruised – I felt good about the work I had done with the RFA signings, the AHL team and the other things that had been my responsibilities. I had every reason to believe this was more about regime change and politics than my performance or fit with the organization’s culture. But it was certainly a blow to my identity and sense of self. I had been “the Canucks guy” in my neighborhood, at my kids’ school and in my friend group for so long that I now had to rediscover who I was without the logo on my chest. I very quickly learned that you should never let a job define who you are.

Luckily, I didn’t get to wallow in self-pity for too long, because very soon after my dismissal, Frank Seravalli called and asked me to join Daily Faceoff. I was skeptical and reluctant at first, but after a few days I called Frank back and agreed to take the plunge. My kids were in school and my wife was working, so it wasn’t like I could jet off to a beach island somewhere and forget about the real world. I needed something to occupy my time and my mind, to keep me plugged in to the game of hockey and allow me to develop new skills and make new contacts. It was the perfect lifeline. And what an adventure it has been. Frank and the crew at DFO have given me far more than I could ever have given back to the platform.

For starters, I had more fun watching hockey this year than I have had since I was a kid. Without the stress and anxiety that comes from having a laser focus on one team’s challenges, I got to enjoy all 32 teams. I saw moments and storylines unfold that I would have missed had I been at the arena or on the road every night. Even though I needed to watch games in a way that would allow me to provide analysis and insight, I could also just be a fan. I came to realize there was a whole other hockey world outside of the Canucks, and I liked it.

Over the course of the year, my respect and admiration for the members of the media grew by at least ten sizes, just like the Grinch’s heart. These people are tireless workers who just want to inform, entertain and be part of something bigger than themselves. I was only tasked with coming up with two articles per week of about 1,000 words in length. Child’s play, I thought. Not so. While I always found a way to get it done, it was more challenging than I ever expected to keep coming up with new ideas for articles that would be fun, interesting and engaging. Keeping the content wheel spinning is no easy task, and the people that do it day in and day out as a full-time job should be appreciated and applauded. Walking a mile in their shoes has given me a great appreciation for the craft.

To be honest, I sometimes felt like an interloper, a part-time contributor who basically got to sit at my desk and share stories and insights from my past life while watching these full-time professionals work. I never had to interview anyone, hold a microphone in a scrum or grind out multiple phone calls to suss out who was getting traded and where. My part was easy by comparison.

As a front office executive, I used to hate the media trying to break news first. As a club, you always want to control the timing and substance of the message. But hockey fans are insatiable, and I now can at least understand, if not appreciate, the media desire to get all of the information, and to be first in line in doing that (Frank rules!).

I also hadn’t previously realized the teamwork involved in delivering sports media content. I was part of a DFO channel on the Slack app where DFO and Nation Network team members would be active almost all day and night throughout the season co-ordinating their efforts to bring fans the news and rumors of the day as they happened. Just following the trail of messages wore me out. I came to really admire their work ethic, their desire for accuracy and their commitment to each other and to the DFO brand. It could easily have been a group of individual contributors, but it was a rock solid team.

It was a privilege to be part of that team and to be part of a new and emerging hockey brand. I hope people have appreciated the behind the scenes peek I offered into NHL boardrooms and had a few laughs at my anecdotes. I delivered what I knew best, and hopefully it made me just a little bit unique. Just know that writing the stories and sharing my knowledge was cathartic and likely gave me more than I gave readers.

And so, as this tumultuous personal journey of a season draws to a close, my time as a media member may also close. I am not ruling out a comeback or un-retirement a la Brady or Gronk, and I’ll still make my voice heard on Twitter from time to time. Maybe I will even resurface on DFO, but the truth is, this was never intended to be a career transition. It has been a blast and something that I have truly treasured, and I cannot thank all of the DFO crew enough for the new lease on life that I found with them.

2021-22 gave me an absolute Avalanche of memories (see what I did there?!). Not all of them good ones, but it absolutely ended on a high note. I am looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead, whether that includes some media or not. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who read the articles, watched me on the show, followed, re-tweeted, liked and supported me.

That’s all for now. I think the lights might be coming on. Or maybe not. This time, I’ll be controlling the switch.

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Chris Gear joined Daily Faceoff in January after a 12-year run with the Vancouver Canucks, most recently as the club’s Assistant General Manager and Chief Legal Officer. Before migrating over to the hockey operations department, where his responsibilities included contract negotiations, CBA compliance, assisting with roster and salary cap management and governance for the AHL franchise, Gear was the Canucks’ vice president and general counsel.

Click here to read Gear’s other Daily Faceoff stories.

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