Thirty-six of the world’s greatest hockey players quietly slipped into Chicago this week, then quietly slipped out.
You didn’t notice because the NHL didn’t want you to. Not yet, anyway.
The players — including Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel and, of course, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane — were in town for the National Player Tour, an annual event the NHL hosts so its many broadcast partners can shoot promos in one fell swoop to air throughout the season, which begins next month.
The NHL took over MB Ice Arena, the Blackhawks’ training facility near the United Center, using both sheets of ice and the locker rooms. Players were shuttled from one station to another in full uniform.
At one point, Crosby skated onto the ice and disappeared behind black drapery. Inside, cameras rolled and a director got to work.
“Look down,” he told Crosby. “Look up. Lean on the blade. A little bit of swagger. A little bit of attitude.”
A few minutes later, Crosby left for another station to shoot more promos for a different network and was replaced by Penguins teammate Evgeni Malkin, who was replaced by Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin, who was replaced by McDavid.
And so on.
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly sat down with the Tribune on Thursday to talk about the event, why the league brought it to Chicago and if the Hawks might host the All-Star Game for the first time since 1991. (Some answers have been edited for space and clarity.)
This has been going on for nine years. How did the National Player Tour come about?
It was a decision made by both the league and the players association to get some significant players in the right place prior to the season where they can do interviews, photo shoots, a whole host of different things that you might not even get an opportunity to do during the course of the season. And that you could use that as a platform to create some attention around the start of our season. And I think it’s worked tremendously well.
How has it evolved since you first started doing it?
The first year we did it, I can’t even tell you the number of players, but it was less than 10. This year I think we have 36 players here in Chicago representing 30 of our 31 franchises, and the only reason the other franchise isn’t represented is they’re headed off to China in the next couple days. Basically, we have full league participation. We get to promote the best players on every team.
The roster of players here might even rival our All-Star Game in terms of the significance of the talent that we have here. It’s a great statement of where the league is. Our teams are all very competitive, they all have great stars and it’s good to be able to communicate that to other markets in the league. This is the vehicle to do that.
Don’t you have the urge to have a quick pickup game?
It’s funny because one of the reasons we decided to come to Chicago was the fact that this practice rink provided an opportunity that isn’t as accessible in New York City. I mean, we have rinks and we can get the players to the rinks and do shoots at rinks, but they were disjointed from where we were doing all their other media obligations. This was much more compressed and condensed and provided a unique opportunity for the players to do everything they need to do in a relatively small geographic radius.
But the thought was also that if players wanted to get some practice time or play a scrimmage, that they’d have an opportunity to do that. As it’s played out — and this will probably be true every year — at the end of the day, there’s too much to do to really fit that in unless we formally create a window for that. Maybe that’s on the horizon, but it’s not there yet.
Not only have we grown to 36 players here, we for the second consecutive summer did a European media tour, which we held in Stockholm. We had 25 European-born players — we had a lot of Swedes because we were in Stockholm — (and) I think we had six or seven countries represented. What we found, particularly in Sweden, they love to follow their players from their own homelands and to get them in that environment where they don’t normally travel to North America for our games until the Stanley Cup Final. It really gave them the opportunity to interact with the European players.
How do you decide which players come?
We do it jointly, actually three parties. We have to do it with the players association, to determine a target list, and then do it with the club as to who they necessarily want to promote. So it’s kind of a combination process. But obviously we encourage, and as time has gone on, we’ve gotten better and better players.
Sometimes you’ll run into an unavoidable conflict — something doesn’t work from a logistic standpoint. Alex Ovechkin has come to this numerous times in the past, but obviously he had a much shorter summer (with the Capitals winning the Stanley Cup) and his wife had a baby and we weren’t going to take the last 10 days of what already was a short summer to make him travel to North America a week or 10 days early before training camp to do this. I think the quality of our groupings has been better every year.
The NHL has as much of an international connection as any of the pro sports leagues. You’re in China now. Can you tell me about its relationship to the league?
We’re probably three years into a committed Chinese growth strategy, where the difference in our sport and, perhaps, basketball is China doesn’t really have any history or culture in hockey. And so we realized that to make a difference in China and to make Chinese people interested in hockey — playing hockey and watching hockey — we had to build at the grassroots level.
Obviously, you don’t finance a program for every kid in China because that would cost more in revenue than the league generates on a yearly basis. So you have to be strategic, you have to form the right partners. Part of growing the visibility of hockey is bringing the best players and teams there too. So last year we brought the Canucks and Kings to play two preseason games, one in Shanghai and one in Beijing. This year we’re bringing the Calgary Flames and Boston Bruins. They’re leaving next week to play a game in Shenzhen, which is in southern China, and a game in Beijing, and (we) would hope to do that on a regular basis as we continue to contribute and build hockey at the grassroots level.
We also have an NHL strategy at a higher level and ultimately (want to) take advantage of what I think has been a governmental commitment in China to build an interest in winter sports, and that includes hockey and has a lot to do with the Winter Olympics in 2022 being given to Beijing.
The players have tonight free. Do you have a big dinner for everybody?
Those are always tricky. You want to keep the number of mandatory events, so to speak, to a minimum and let them do what they want to do. But in essence they’re here for a day and a half working for us and for the league and for the game, so you want to make it as comfortable for them as possible. I think we’ve gone a long way to doing that in terms of where we put them and what we reimburse and how we get them around. What’s already kind of a job, you try to make it as pleasant as possible.
Did you learn from other leagues that do something similar?
I haven’t heard of the NFL ever doing this or Major League Baseball or even the NBA.
Are there any thoughts about bringing the All-Star Game to Chicago?
Of course, there are always thoughts to bring everything to Chicago because it’s a great city and (the Hawks are) a great organization and they’ve been fantastic, helpful to us particularly with their return to prominence. They’ve always been very cooperative with all league initiatives. You’d almost like to clone them and make 30 other Chicago Blackhawks. So, yeah, when they express an interest and they’re ready for an All-Star Game, they’ll get an All-Star Game.
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