Week 10 - Part 1

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:16] Speaker B: 7. [00:00:17] Speaker C: We have a very special guest today, Jeremy Knight, the chief of staff for Hockey Canada. [00:00:21] Speaker B: And he'll be getting into a little. [00:00:23] Speaker C: Bit about what that role is. It's a really unique opportunity to speak to someone who's not just heavily involved with Hockey Canada right now, but also a Brock alumni himself. He's from bc. He's got a long journey, not just through the hockey industry, but the Canadian sport industry as a whole. And I'm extremely excited to get you to listen to his journey and listen to what he's up to and the lessons that he's learned, not just about sport in general, but also about sport management as we near the end of the semester. So if you have any questions for Jeremy, please let me know. He's been gracious enough to say that he would love to, if anyone, to reach out to him. He's incredibly approachable and handles a large portfolio of responsibilities for Hockey Canada right now, many of which involve media and corporate partnerships as well. So I'd be happy to introduce you to Jeremy. He's again, extremely friendly and courteous speaker, as you're about to hear. We're gonna have another guest speaker this week who also has a relationship to Barack University as well and is very close in terms of timeline to where you are right now as well, and has sort of made his journey into the industry itself post graduation. So we're really excited to have Jeremy. It's a bit of a change of pace here to have someone who's so, so directly connected and also directly connected to the university. But with no further ado, the chief of staff for Hockey Canada, Jeremy Knight. [00:01:51] Speaker B: 4P97. We are so, so fortunate to have Jeremy Knight, Chief of Staff for Hockey Canada, joining us today. Jeremy, thank you so much for having. [00:01:58] Speaker A: For. [00:01:58] Speaker B: For joining us. [00:01:59] Speaker A: No, thanks for having me. And hopefully my. My journey, my story from from Brock to HOCKEY Canada can help people in this class. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. Well, let's start there. Jeremy, take us through your journey. You started Brock. Where are you from? How'd you get to Brock? Tell us about your journey. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I grew up in North Vancouver. I grew up fortunate to have the Vancouver Canadians. I was a big baseball fan growing up, so I was able to be their bat boy. My family was a billet family and then progressed to working their media department in high school, which was a really cool experience and really set the ground for wanting to work in sports. And the more I looked into it, the Brock program was perfect for me. I started a Brock in 2012 and was really fortunate to have a great group of people that I went through the program with. And when I was at Brock, I continued working for the Canadians in the summer and then with the athletic department at Brock, my four years there. So that was a really unique experience for me. I got to work with the hockey teams, basketball teams, volleyball teams, broadcasting sports information, some game day support as well. So I really just wanted to get to learn more about how the industry works overall, especially on the university side. And it was a really cool experience for me and got to work with some of my housemates and other close friends with a lot of the Brock team. So that was really unique. And then my last two summers at Brock, I ended up working for the Blue Jays and baseball operations. And growing up, I thought that was a path I really wanted to, to go on and into the team side. And my journey's kind of gone the opposite way to more the business of sport. But really fortunate to, to be in that. And I think for me it was all about finding where's my niche and where can I have the most value. And for me that was communications. And it's led to this role with Hockey Canada. But I've been here for three and a half years now on the corporate communications side and now as chief of staff, working a little bit more with our executive team too. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Wonderful. So you get hired by Hockey Canada. Tell us what that was like. Tell us what your first sort of year on the job was like. What was the learning curve like? Was it work you had done before? What was the sort of initiation like into the hockey world? [00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was really cool. And I guess to preface it too, I didn't really have a hockey background growing up. Like I said, I grew up in Vancouver, was a big Canops fan. I love, have great memories of watching the Olympic teams in the early 2000s, 2010, 2014. But I never really saw a career in hockey for me necessarily as much as I loved it. I thought baseball was where I was going to end up. And when I graduated from Brock and when I finished my last summer with the Blue Jays, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I got a really fortunate meeting with Brad Holland, who's with the Leafs at the time, and he said, hey, the NHL Coaches association is looking for some extra help. So from there I got to meet with the executive director, Mike Hirschfeld. He got hired two days before. It was a completely, I guess, serendipitous type meeting. So I ended up helping Mike while I was trying to Figure out what I wanted to do post university and I got a full time job at youth sports around the same time. So I'd work in the day at youth sports, go home at night, do some volunteer work with the coaches. But I really found that people in hockey were more than willing to help. Even more than baseball and other sports that I was working with when I was at youth sports. So I really began to think from that point like there is a potential path in hockey. I didn't know what that would look like, but I think it's a. It was a. It was a great reminder to me that you never know what opportunities will be out there. I didn't know there was an NHL Coaches Association. Not sure how many people in this class know that it exists either, but they essentially support everyone in the NHL and AHL on all the office stuff. So that was really cool. And then when I was at YOU sports I went back to the Blue Jays in the comms role. Then this opportunity came up at Hockey Canada and again I didn't think I'd necessarily work in hockey, but I'd been with the coaches association for five and a half years at that point. Professionally I'd gone more down the calm side and it was a manager of corporate communications was the title. It was a brand new role at Hockey Canada. I thought that meant there could be a really good opportunity to kind of make it what I, what I would want, but also to learn what they wanted too. Because I wouldn't want to go to an organization and, you know, not align with the values or what I thought the actual role could be. So, like I said, joined three and a half years ago. The first project I worked on was the Paralympic roster announcement in Beijing. Because the staff we had in Beijing had burner phones and emails so they couldn't actually announce the roster with their Hockey Canada software. So I was thrown right in the fire there with the Olympics and Paralympics. We cancelled or, sorry we announced the men's roster my second day working there, which was a really unique opportunity too. So I felt like it was a bit of information overload, but it was a cool way to learn. And then going through the Olympics, the men's side didn't go as, as well as we'd hoped. The women's team won gold and the para team came second. But I just felt really connected right away to everyone. And Hockey Canada has now become a remote organization for the most part. So pre covered. It was mostly Calgary staff and. And I'm in Toronto now and probably wouldn't have relocated. So we people across the country and the first couple months were really about understanding all aspects of the business. And to me, growing up, Hockey Canada was who you see every four years with the Olympics and Paralympics, the World cup of Hockey. But what I didn't understand or fully grasp was the magnitude of how we work with members across the country. Everyone who ever played minor hockey, you're part of Hockey Canada. So there's a lot that goes into it and a lot of different national teams as well. U17, U18, women's development. So there's always events going on. So my first four or five months was getting my feet wet. And then there's a bit of a crisis that that transpired with some of the reporting from TSN on the alleged 2018 group sexual assault. So that took over my role. I would say that summer, for the next year, year and a half, just in terms of managing that from a PR side. But it was a really interesting time, I think, to join and. And I think now we've really transformed as an organization the last two years. And as we look towards the future, we have new values, a new mission statement, new vision. And I think as we've continued to evolve and our registration has surpassed where it was pre Covid, we feel like hockey is hopefully positioned to remain the leader in Canada. And I feel really fortunate to be part of that and to be there as well. [00:08:31] Speaker B: Wonderful. And we're going to return to this new vision for Hockey Canada because I'm desperately curious about that in a second, but give us a sense. So you manage your corporate communications, your job now as chief of staff. What is a day like for you? What is it? What is a week like for you? Is there such a thing as a typical week or is every week completely different? [00:08:49] Speaker A: It definitely varies. I think there's some similarities overall in my new role still. I oversee our corporate communications, so that would be everything outside of events and teams. We have communications people who travel with every national team. They're at every event that we host, double IHF and domestic events, too. But for me, it's a lot of working with our members, internal communications partners, government. A lot of government relations is part of my new role now, and a lot of that's federal, just based on being a national sport organization, but also provincially and municipally, depending on where we're hosting events. A large part of my new role, and I started this in January, is supporting our president and CEO, Katherine Henderson, and making sure, I don't want to say special projects Because I feel like that's a loose term that everyone throws out. But just making sure that if there's anything I can support with from strategy or meeting prep, that I'm there to have all the information to help prep her and everyone else in our leadership team and support them as best I can. But I would say for the most part, like I said, we're working remotely. There's a lot of meetings with our members. One of our biggest priorities right now is around women's and girls hockey and we've been having a steering committee the last year with the NHL, pwhl, former women's team players and trying to figure out the next blueprint of women's hockey in Canada. So that's been a huge part of my role the last bit. But it's really a cross functional job where able to kind of see under the hood of the car and see how it all comes together and it's really cool. Some weeks, you know, I'll be all in on one project or a few things come up or a mini crisis and we, we manage that. Other weeks it's a lot more media focused and, and comms heavy and one example might just be the national teams orientation camp we had in August. So there was a lot of prep that went into that. We had a committee for six months leading up to it and then subcommittees within that. But essentially we brought together the men's, women's and para hopefuls together. For the first time ever they'd had men's camps separately, women's para. Obviously with the PWHL landscape shifting, it gave us an opportunity to forget centralization for the women and have everyone there for four days in Calgary. And it was really cool. My role in that was organizing the media side of it. So we had a media day, we had a press conference, some of my colleagues were leading a car wash where we had tsn, cbc, the NHL, cpc, all the stakeholders to capture any content that they wanted ahead of the game. So there's a lot of planning of stuff like that too and executing it. But day to day my biggest thing would be managing media requests, supporting Catherine and the leadership team on anything they're working on and really just making sure that projects continue to roll because it's easy with the number of events and initiatives we have going on, to lose sight of some deadlines and just trying to make sure the ship stays on track. [00:11:42] Speaker B: My goodness, that is a very diverse working portfolio there. You have everything from crisis PR management to media relationship. I mean that is a very Very, very wide remit of things that you're doing right now. That is a. And again. And imagining three years into the future in terms of what you're going to be doing along there. I mean, that must be exciting and also probably daunting at times where you're trying to figure out, you know, do I have any sort of sense of what I'm going to be doing one day or another? Especially when you talk about some of the changes that have occurred in Hockey Canada over the past five years. Certainly. But even you mentioned centralization. That, I mean, that centralization is a cornerstone of the women's program. That was, you know, how the women's program operated for a very long time. Centralization used to be how the men's program worked, even prior, many, many decades ago. I mean, so those types of changes, I mean, you're just sort of thrown into these situations. I mean, I can't imagine that's a, an easy process, but it certainly sounds, sounds exciting. But tell me a little bit about some of the changes on that topic of changes in Hockey Canada. When Hockey Canada decides that they're going to have a sort of strategic overhaul and that was sort of brought to them and as something that, that, that, that should happen and they've done that. How, how in your role, how have you sort of seen this strategic overhaul occurring? And tell us a little bit about what this sort of large change has gone on in Hockey Canada. [00:12:58] Speaker A: Yeah, and I'll get into the specific ones in a sec. I think to start, though, change is hard for everyone, right? Personally, professionally, you think back to when you start university, when you graduate university, and what everyone will feel like when they finish their fourth year at Brock, like it, there's a lot of change and it's always hard. But I think what you see with Major League Baseball and the pitch clock, the CFL and some of the recent changes they've made, like the CFL especially, it's so enriched with traditional and people are afraid of change. I think hockey has always been somewhat the same too. So when a lot of change did happen at Hockey Canada a few years ago, you had a lot of resistance. But at the time, we didn't really have a choice either. So it was how are we going to push through? So I think one of the things I found the most beneficial was just collaboration and between our members and government and stakeholders, it was about collaboration and communication. So if we're going to implement something, I'll use our safety mechanism as an example. So now if there's any type of maltreatment being reported at any level of Hockey Canada programming goes to one central independent hub. The ITP is what we call it, the independent third party. But when that gets announced, we don't just launch it and then say, here you go, you have to educate the provincial members, you have to educate your partners on what it means, you have to educate the public, you have to educate parents if they think their kids experiencing maltreatment. How do you report it? You have to reassure them it's confidential. So it's a lot about making sure people are informed, but then also working with them and working with our members to say, you know, what are the gaps? How do we address them? And when we think back to three years ago when we launched that mechanism, it's completely evolved to what it is now, which is a lot more thorough. And we do public reporting on it now. But when it started, like anything, there were issues with it. So we had to work through that with the members and, you know, better understanding our investigations taking too long. How do we mitigate that? So it just really depends. But I think change has change. Management's been a huge part of what we've, we've done. And we're onto our third board of directors now. Since October 2022, we had a transition board that came in then. Two full boards since then. And essentially for Hockey Canada, the board oversees our management. So they're volunteers. They all, for the most part, have full time jobs. They're doing this off the side of their desk, but they have a really important role to help guide the future of hockey in Canada. And I think our transition board was spending full time hours trying to make sure that Hockey Canada was positioned for success. Catherine, our new President CEO joined in June 2023. And that was a real turning point for us in terms of this is where we're headed. And her vision can help guide us there. So I think that was a really important part for us. But along the way, we've had three beyond the board summits, which are to tackle issues in hockey culture and safety, to make sure that we're equipping everyone with the tools they need to bring that back to their local associations. You know, we've had a equity, diversity and inclusion path forward. We made a lot of progress, I think, with community partnerships and not just saying, well, the minor hockey associations are what drives Hockey Canada, but it's a lot of off ice changes really, that have led to where we are now. And then I think you alluded to it, the on ice Changes might be what's next with the pwhl and what does that landscape look like for women's hockey for people on this call? Maybe it means there's more job opportunities when the league continues to expand and more media outlets are looking to cover it. And then also on the junior hockey side, you know, what's our role with the NCAA changes? CHL is a separate league from Hockey Canada, but traditionally that's been our biggest pot of players to pick from for national teams on the men's side and the junior team especially. But what does that look like? And I don't think anyone really knows necessarily right now, but those are some of the things where there's going to be more change management and just making sure that the pathways that we have for men, women and para athletes in Canada are aligned with what they're looking for. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I mean, we can add change manager to be your. Your title of one of your. I mean, that is essentially. That's such an elegant way of describing what it is that you've been tasked with, because whether that's policy related changes, I mean, it sort of really does cover a lot of the elements that are taught at Brock. Right. Where management of nonprofit sport organizations. I mean, you mentioned the fact that there's a volunteer board. That's a huge common struggle with many NSOs and PSOs. The difference is Hockey Canada is the scale of the. And the complexity of the mechanisms. You mentioned this sort of use the analogy of under the hood. I mean, that is a very complex car with a lot, you know, very large parts. And you mentioned them. You've mentioned this frequently throughout this call. You kept saying the members, the members, the members. I think it's important to sort of remind our listeners here, our classmates, that they are. This is a complex sort of power struggle that occurs within Hockey Canada sometimes between you and your membership. Can you describe what that sort of structure, how it works? You say educating our members. If you're maybe unfamiliar with how the process of Hockey Canada or Hockey Canada's operations, what do you mean when you say consulting with members or working with members? [00:17:59] Speaker A: Members, yeah. And I think when I was at Brock, I could. I wasn't fully aware of the scope of just the impact that members have, not just with Hockey Canada, but I think back to when I was at youth sports and the members for them were the 56 universities and the four conferences. And at the end of the day, they're the ones who make a lot of the big decisions and have to be supportive. So For Hockey Canada, what that means is our 13 provincial and territorial sport bodies. So the Ontario Hockey Federation, Hockey Quebec, BC Hockey, etc. So those are 13 members and at the end of the day they oversee Hockey Canada. So they vote in our board and as I mentioned, the board oversees our management. So if you go through the hierarchy, it really is the members, member associations here, board of directors and then Hockey Canada staff, even though you'd think is the, the national sport organization, you might actually be at the top of that, that pyramid. So is really interesting. The members, I think there's a lot of variation in some policies that we have are actually overseen by the members or they have their own that might conflict with national policies. So it's working with them to make sure where's overlap. If there are provincial considerations for one member, how does that impact the national policy? We've seen that with some of the changes in Alberta lately. So it's really just understanding how do we make sure hockey can be delivered by the members. Because ultimately Hockey Canada is a national governing body. It's the provincial members and their associations who deliver hockey to the 600,000 people who play it across the country. Right now we can do it to the best of our ability to provide programs and player pathways, but they're the ones who ultimately are delivering it. And the provincial members, I know a couple of my colleagues at Brock when I was in school, they ended up working for the Ontario Hockey Federation and other PSOs after. And it's a really great way to get into the industry as well. But those provincial bodies really are the ones who are driving a lot of the day to day management of how hockey's run across the country. Right. [00:19:59] Speaker B: And again, you even alluded to something even more important there, which is to say, you know, in this class right now, in the classrooms you're in in Brock, you never know where people are going to end up. So that's why it's so important to make those connections while you can among your classmates. I think we do a good job sort of emphasizing the sort of networking opportunities you're supposed to do with people in the industry. But the best network you're ever going to have is the people sitting around you. I mean, I remember Kyle Dubas at the commencement address in recent years said the exact same thing. The person sitting next to him in the opening orientation end up being his best friend and his future agents. I mean, like that, that's a deeply meaningful part about sport management because it brings people like yourself from North Vancouver all the way over here. I mean, this is a collection of some really, really fascinating people that are only going to grow and evolve as they, as they enter their career. So hang on to your, the people that you're sitting with and to that point here, and I really do appreciate the time. One thing that I want to say, first of all is that I think I'm guilty of this myself. We use Hockey Canada sometimes as maybe a pin cushion or sort of a crash test dummy. Sometimes where we say, look all the problems that we have with say Canadian hockey culture or the industry itself, we sort of point to Hockey Canada and say, fix it, go fix it. I think it would be incumbent upon all of us, myself included, to recognize the fact that there are a lot of really smart, very hard working people who are work to the bone and understand these problems a lot better even sometimes than we all do from outside of it. It's just very difficult to make change rapidly. And I can't believe how much change has occurred as rapidly as it has occurred inside hockey camp. But I think for those of you who are out there who say we ought to change this and this and this, myself included, I think again, people like Jeremy really demonstrate the fact that we have capable people out there that are working on these issues. Just if you care about these issues, if you want to fix these things, get involved. To your point, Jeremy, get involved with your local pso, your local, even your local, the hockey association you played with growing up, your minor hockey association. We have another guest speaker that's become the executive director of the Forest Hill Hockey association in Toronto. I mean, he was at Brock Grad recently. Really young person as well. So all that's fantastic. But Jeremy, what advice would you give to, to Brock students? Some of them are in third year, some of them, most of them are in fourth year. They're, they're listening to this right now. They're thinking to themselves, I really want to work in hockey. Or they may be like yourself, where they want to work in sport and they're taking this course as an elective and they're like, well, maybe hockey be interesting to me. What advice would you give to, to them and what advice would you give even, even yourself if you were talking to yourself from, from, from the past? [00:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's so many opportunities to get involved now. And you know, the, I'll use the Brockman's hockey team as an example. Like you see the content that they're putting out. So the people working for that team now, they obviously want to work in sport in some capacity and they're doing graphic design or videography. Like there's so many ways now to, to put yourself out there to see what you want to do. But I think it's all about finding your niche for the most part and what you want to do. A lot of the time people reach out for jobs and say, hey, I just want to work in hockey. And that's great because I think at the end of the day a lot of people do and there's ways to do it, but it's. How do you think you can provide value to an organization that can get your foot in the door? Because if your foot's in the door and you have an opportunity, then if you end up changing like I worked in marketing and social media for three years at youth sports. Not for me, like just knew that wasn't my path. But then you're able to translate those skills to something else. So into communications again. And I think it's all about finding out how you can line up your skills with your passions too. I'll use one Brock example. Like Adam Krueger is someone I went to school with. He's a director of content for the Winnipeg jets now. And Adam wanted to work in baseball operations and then got this opportunity in content and he transformed the Toronto Argos social media brand. He was a big hockey, he was a big hockey guy. I don't think he thought he had a path in hockey. He's been there, I think three years now and he oversees all their content. So I think you never know where the industry goes. Ten years ago that job probably wouldn't have existed, let alone be such a prominent role in their leadership team there. But I think just any advice for people is, you know, networking can be a taboo word sometimes and people overthink it. But it's really about finding like minded people that you can connect with and learn from too. And I'm happy if anyone wants to reach out on LinkedIn or otherwise like to help anyone out. But I think when I look back on some of the opportunities I've had, Coaches association being a huge one like that, that really did change my career path. And I wouldn't have gotten this job at Hockey Canada without the six and a half years of volunteering with them before I got this job. But there's a lot of different ways to get involved and just looks different for everyone. So whether you are scouting, whether you want to do content, whether you want to be in media, it's about finding ways to differentiate yourself and you can say to a prospective employer in the future or have them find you and say, this is what I'm good at and here's what I've done. And there's many different ways to do that. And like I said, PWHL exploding is a huge opportunity, I think, for jobs across the industry. And we just had, you know, we've seen video coaches and people go work for teams. But then also you look at the. The GOJL just changed its name recently to the GEO Gohl because they're partnering with the ohl. So if you're looking for a pathway there, there's probably going to be more focus from the OHL of how do we cover the go the GOHL now. So there's a lot of opportunities. The NHL Officiating association, there's just a ton of ways to get involved. So if you really love hockey, and that's for you, don't limit yourself to what you think are the jobs you see on LinkedIn or indeed or anywhere. I think just look for opportunities and you can reach out to people and just sell yourself on. Here's what I'm passionate about. Here's how I think I can help you. And is there any way I can. Is there any way I can balance that out and provide value to your organization? [00:25:40] Speaker B: Jeremy, thank you so much again on behalf of Brock. We're all super proud of you and we're looking forward to you continuing your career with Hockey Canada and then wherever else it takes you, whether it's in Hockey Canada or in any other sport. You clearly have a very broad sort of skill set in sport. So thank you so much for your time on behalf of the entire class. [00:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me. Like I said, if anyone wants to reach out, always happy to help. Sam.