If you’re a sports fan, chances are you’ve done it.
Right after your favourite team announces a big trade or signing, you’ve called up your friends and weighed in on the deal, second guessing your team’s executives and explaining what you would have done to push your squad over the hump.
And while that opportunity might be little more than a pipe dream for most sports fans, one of the National Hockey League’s top dealmakers made a stop at his alma mater, the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, last Tuesday to talk to a group of law students about the keys to landing a job in an NHL front office.
Speaking in front of 100 students at U of O’s Fauteux Hall, Boston Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli said that getting to the top of a team’s hockey operations department takes ingenuity, persistence and, above all, passion.
“You have to be creative and find a way in,” he said. “You can’t expect to get into the field and get paid right away. It’s something you’ve got to work around and really be passionate about if this is something you want to do.”
Unlike many of the league’s top executives, Chiarelli never skated in the NHL. While he did captain his college squad at Harvard and dabble in a professional league in Europe, Chiarelli entered the league through more legal avenues after graduating from U of O’s law school and being called to the Ontario Bar in 1993.
Chiarelli started work in general practice before eventually entering the sports sector by working as a sports agent with fellow U of O grad Larry Kelly. From there, Chiarelli began to meet people in the big league, and landed a job as the director of legal relations with the Ottawa Senators in 2000.
In that position, Chiarelli said he wasn’t working exclusively in a hockey capacity; he also dealt with land developments and commercial tenancies around the Senators’ arena in Kanata, Ontario. In an area as competitive as sports law, however, Chiarelli noted that you have to be flexible in breaking into the business if you want to get your shot at the top posts.
“The way I got into it wasn’t the traditional way,” he said, noting that he also did some scouting work for Harvard after gaining his first job out of law school. “It was hard having to do general practice and go scouting at nights and during the weekends while raising a family. It was difficult, but it was something I wanted to do, and I knew I really wanted to do this.
“I really just kept working towards the light at the end of the tunnel.”
After climbing his way up to the assistant general manager’s office in 2005, Chiarelli left the Senators to become general manager of the Bruins in 2006. Under him, the Bruins have built themselves into a perennial contender, making the playoffs in three out of his four seasons while making it to the Eastern Conference semi-finals in each of the last two years.
Speaking for just over an hour, Chiarelli also took time to talk puck with many of the students who questioned him on topics including the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, dealing with the media and — of course — his trade for former Toronto Maple Leaf Tomas Kaberle last month. Plus, Chiarelli took questions from Bruins fans who wanted to know if he felt his squad could break the team’s 38-year championship drought this season.
“We’ve made some good moves and I think we’ve got a team that can compete,” he said. “I think we have a good shot.”
Scott Nowoselski is a graduate of Ryerson University’s journalism program, and is currently in his first year of study at the University of Ottawa’s common law program. His areas of interest include sports, media and intellectual property law.