By Matt Blittner, The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com
What does an NHL Player Agent’s job entail?
It seems like a simple question. However, the answer is anything but simple. We all know agents are responsible for negotiating contracts on behalf of their clients. But that’s just one of their many, many responsibilities. To be an agent for a player in today’s NHL, you essentially have to be a chameleon. You have to adapt to every situation and be whatever your client, or clients, needs you to be in that moment.
In order to drill down deep to find out exactly what NHL Player Agents do we enlisted the services of: four currently certified agents; one agent who is hopeful to be certified soon; and the NHL Players’ Association. Why the NHLPA? Well, The Players’ Association is the group responsible for certifying and keeping track of all agents who represent NHL players.
Our panel of certified agents consists of: Neil Sheehy (I-C-E Hockey Agency); Rand Simon (Newport Sports Management Inc.); William Kawam (The Orr Hockey Group); and one agent who requested anonymity; we’ll refer to him as “Agent X,” (he works for a mid-sized agency). Lastly, our agent who is hopeful to become certified soon, is Andrew Vasilatos (Quantum Hockey Agency). Together, these five panelists will help us understand the ins and outs of what the typical NHL Player Agent does on a day-to-day basis.
First, before we dive into those daily responsibilities, let’s find out how one becomes a certified NHL player agent.
According to the NHLPA:
“Prospective agents must submit an application form and related materials detailing their education, background, their current business and personal relationships, as well as previous business dealings. The applications are then thoroughly reviewed by NHLPA staff, including counsel, who contact the applicant’s personal references, obtain an independent background report from our third-party provider, and conduct a formal interview with each applicant.
“The NHLPA staff may make further inquiries or conduct further investigations before any decision regarding an applicant’s certification has been rendered. The decision whether or not to approve an application for certification is ultimately delegated to the NHLPA staff who oversee the agent certification program.”
And in case you’re wondering what criteria the NHLPA staff uses to make its final decision, The PA had this to say:
“The NHLPA regulates the conduct of player agents under its Regulations Governing Agent Certification. The Agent Regulations set out the various terms under which agent duties must be performed, and include standards of conduct with which agents must comply. The Agent Regulations also set out the procedure by which certification may be granted.
“The objective of agent certification is to establish the highest degree of professional competence, conduct and integrity in the representation of professional hockey players. To that end, the NHLPA expects that each and every agent certified under these procedures will strive to attain, achieve and maintain high quality performance as a player agent.
“At a minimum, each agent will be expected to become knowledgeable about the NHLPA, its structure and the services it provides. Agents will be expected to understand the economics of the industry, the applicable Collective Bargaining Agreements, basic negotiating strategies and techniques and those areas of the law relevant to the professional duties of an agent. The agent certification process is designed to evaluate whether the applicant will be able to satisfy these inherent objectives and fulfill the obligations of an Agent as stipulated by the Agent Regulations.”
Lastly, in order to be eligible to become an agent, the prospective person must already have a client, or clients, who they will officially represent upon being approved by The PA.
“To be eligible for Certified Status immediately upon approval of their application, an agent must currently represent either a player under contract to an NHL Club or a player who, having had a contract with an NHL Club for the immediately preceding season, has become a free agent pursuant to the CBA (an “NHL Player”). A duly executed Standard Player Agent Contract must be submitted with the Application for Certification to establish such representation.
“Any person who does not have an NHL Player as a client but wishes to perform the functions of an agent and has an unsigned drafted player as a client is eligible to submit an Application for Certification and receive Pending Certified Status. A duly executed Standard Player Agent Contract must be submitted with the Application for Certification to establish such representation.”
It’s important to note that the process of becoming an NHL Player Agent is, at least partly, a chicken and the egg type relationship. You see, in order to be eligible for approval by The PA, you must have a client, or clients, who want you as their representative. However, you can’t officially be your client’s agent until you get approved. Granted, there is a way to take the chicken-egg relationship part out of the equation and that’s if you are already working for an agency.
“In 2016, I finished working for the New York Rangers in their Hockey Operations Department,” Kawam explained. “I knew that I wanted to give the agency side of the business a try and began cold calling/emailing every top agency and agent in the business. After many failed attempts, I was lucky enough to meet Mike Curran through a friend.
“Mike decided to take a chance on me and allowed me to begin scouting for him. After a couple years of scouting prospective clients, my role expanded into scouting, recruiting, and managing our youth and junior clients. Then, after doing this for a few years, the agency felt that I earned the opportunity to become a fully certified agent.”
For Vasilatos – our aspiring agent – the ability to “earn the opportunity” includes using more modern recruiting techniques. In the past, recruiting was done almost exclusively at the rink. But now, with the advent of social media, there are more channels a prospective agent can use to attain clients.
“At (The NHL and AHL) level they (the players) probably already have agents,” Vasilatos said. “So I would say to start a little bit lower in most cases. I mean, some people are lucky and they just get right in there. But, I think that doesn’t happen as often. So your best bet is probably finding somebody, maybe in the East Coast Hockey League.
“You just kind of recruit them. You could go out to the rink, take a look at them. We’re a bit luckier right now with social media, with Facebooks and Instagrams, with the younger kids. You can maybe reach out to them there, say, ‘Hey, do you have an agent, any representation, do you want to consider a pro career? I could try to help you.’ That’s kind of the route I’ve taken since I am pretty new to this.”
Contacting potential clients is just the first step in the recruiting process. That’s really the easy part. The hard part is trying to sell the client on why you will be a better agent for them then somebody else. With the abundance of agents out there you really have a small window of opportunity to make your pitch and get the player to sign on with you (or your agency).
“In large part, it’s separating yourself, building a relationship, being able to build trust through your reputation,” Agent X explained. “I come from a legal background. Reputation is extremely important for me. Similar to when you’re a lawyer, credibility is key. It’s important. It’s highly important. If you don’t have your credibility, you can’t last. It helps knowing how to communicate with parents, understanding and building a trust in a short time span with families. When you’re recruiting, that’s the key.”
“We recruit kids when they’re 15, 16-years-old,” Agent X continued. “They’re not finished products. So that’s where the development component comes in, where you really have to understand what the player is, his identity and work with him to try to develop him. Then there’s managing the family and managing the expectations of going, psychologically, through the process of the NHL draft.”
“Recruiting is obviously the core of our business,” Simon added. “Whether that’s recruiting a young player or recruiting a current NHL player who’s recently terminated his relationship with his agent. Typically, the recruiting process involves us, as agents, to communicate with Scouts, who scout mainly for the Junior teams, because the recruiting process starts when the players are quite young, typically 15, 16-years-old.
“We have to get an idea from them who they think are the players to watch and keep an eye on. Typically, what would happen is, if we identify a player who we’re interested in, we contact the parents and make an arrangement to meet in person with the parents. If they’re close enough, locally, we have them come by the office.
“Then, from there, hopefully we get an opportunity to also speak to the player. It’s lots of nights of going to games and cold rinks all over the place. We’re a larger firm, so we have people who do recruiting for us, literally all over the world, wherever hockey is played at an elite level. It’s up to those guys to really identify those players and put them onto us so that we can, hopefully, get them as clients.”
Now that we have a fairly solid idea of what the recruiting process is like it’s time to really dig into the daily lives of player agents.
For those of you who think agents spend all day, every day, negotiating contracts, you’re way off the mark. That’s just one of the many things agents do.
“Contract negotiation is really a small portion,” explained Agent X. “I joke when I say 1%, it’s an exaggeration, but really, the core of the job is managing the players’ psyche. You work closely, diligently with the player. We recruit young players at such a young age, so there’s such an important development portion that goes into it. Communication with the player. A lot of it is building a relationship — trust — with the player through communication. Filtering information through the organization. Retrieving information when a player is going through tough times. You have to work with the team to try to make sure the player has the right mindset.”
Some agents, like Kawam, feel their responsibilities can be broken down into three main categories.
“For me, it all starts at the end of every day,” Kawam explained. “As the day comes to an end, I will look through my client list and write down what it is that each client needs for the following day. You can look at this through three lenses: personal, hockey and business.
- Personal: Is there anything that I can help them with personally. A simple example is helping them with booking travel or maybe banking, like setting up a checking account.
- Hockey: Is there anything I can help them with from a hockey perspective. For example, summer training, skills or skating coaches. If they are in season, how are things going for them? Are they in a slump or playing very well? Maybe there are patterns that I am noticing in their game that can help them.
- Business: Is there anything they need from a business perspective? For example, negotiating a contract or securing an endorsement deal.
“I am in touch with every client on a weekly basis. This is a business where you need to be by your phone
24/7 because you never know when a client will need help with something.”
It isn’t a rule that agents need to communicate with each of their clients on a weekly basis, but that’s one of the things Kawam does to set himself apart from the rest. Obviously, there are situations and times when players need more attention from their agents and times when they need less attention.
Knowing how often to check in with each of your clients comes with experience and it goes back to my point at the beginning about agents needing to be chameleons. Some agents even broaden their own skill-sets through various licenses in order to be of more use to their clients. But we’ll circle back to that in a moment.
Getting back to knowing when to check in with your clients, longtime agent Neil Sheehy had this to say:
“A lot depends on where the player is in his career. Trying to help a player understand what he needs to do to continue to put himself in the best position to play. If guys are in the minors, they’re not where they want to be. Sometimes you have to talk kids off the cliff. You have to help them understand there’s a process to getting to the NHL and you just need to continue to be the best player every day; game in, game out.”
Essentially, as an agent, you almost have to be a psychologist for your clients. There are various mood swings and mental states players sift through and agents need to be able to adjust on the fly to best help their players.
However, it’s not just the mental side of things that agents need to concern themselves with. Very often they also need to handle the physical side of hockey – namely, the injuries.
“As I’ve evolved, I became a neuromuscular therapist,” Sheehy said. “I do a lot of work with players to keep them healthy, to help them heal injuries. If you can prevent injuries and heal injuries, you can enhance performance. I do a fair amount of that. My clients ask me about it all the time. They come to my office for treatments — during the off-season as well as in-season. It’s not physical therapy and I’m not a trainer. They do things differently. I’m a licensed neuromuscular therapist.
“We look at things a bit differently. With my experience, as a former player, being hit and having injuries, when I went to school to become a neuromuscular therapist, I went into it with a different thought process. I actually have felt many injuries. I’ve had several surgeries. So, when I was in clinic and everything else, I looked at things differently and tried to learn from my prior injuries, which only helped me. So I understood, when you’ve been injured, what it feels like. You have a different perspective on it when you’re trying to treat it yourself. And I think I learned a lot because of those experiences.”
Speaking of seeing things from a different perspective, agents need to constantly be aware of how their clients view different situations. After all, not every player sees the game the same way. And not every player always agrees with what his team says or does.
“(Sometimes) They’re concerned about medical treatment they’re getting or not getting from a club,” Simon said. “They want a second opinion, which, obviously, we would be assisting them with. They have other CBA related issues. They’re concerned about their rights in regards to having just been traded or just been demoted. What happens to the lease in their old city? How do they get their stuff sent to them from their old club? If they’ve just been married, how does my spouse get on my medical and dental benefits program? What’s going on with my disability insurance? Do I need to do anything different with that?”
“Then there’s playing issues that come up all the time,” Simon continued. “A player’s unhappy because he’s not playing enough. He thinks one of his linemates won’t pass him the puck. Those types of things come up all the time, at all levels of hockey, which, ultimately, in some cases, leads to the player saying, ‘I want out. I want a trade. I need you to get me moved.’
“Because we’re a full service firm, we also do other things for a lot of our players. We look after their financial affairs. So, we’re dealing with anything that comes up with their financial life. We have a marketing department. So, we’re negotiating marketing deals for the players. We’re doing their equipment deals, their trading card deals, appearances, autograph signings.
“There’s a lot that goes on, on a day-to-day basis. They turn to their agents really for everything. In order to be a good agent, you have to have a lot of different skills. It’s good to have skills of a lawyer, skills of a doctor, skills of a therapist, of a financial advisor and of a marketer. There’s just so many different things that can come up with a player. When you’re a large firm like ours and you have lots of players, there’s lots of different issues that come up on a daily basis.”
On top of all that, agents also have to be aware of the size of their respective agencies. Much like employees for Minor League Hockey teams, agents at smaller firms have more hats they have to wear.
“For me, personally, I’m usually trying to find the next client, at some point,” Vasilatos said. “There’s a lot of research going through elite prospect lists, free agent lists and different leagues. We do a lot of our work in Europe, mainly Sweden, and there’s some high level hockey there. So you’re trying to keep abreast of the leagues and the players coming out of there.
“Again, personally, because I do a little bit more than just agent work for the agency, I also write a little bit for the website. I try to get news stories out. We give our players a call, see how their season is going. If any special occasion pops up, a hat-trick, something like that, something that stands out, we’ll write a story. If we have new player signings. So that’s what basically keeps me busy day-to-day.”
Okay, now that we have seen what agents go through daily, let’s talk about the one topic most every fan loves to debate: contract negotiations. How much money should a player get per year? How many years should the contract last? Are there special clauses (i.e. No-Trade, No Movement, etc.) that should be included? Fans love to talk until they’re blue in the face about what kind of contract their favorite player should get. And it’s not just fans. Sports Talk Show Hosts do the same thing on television and radio. Heck, sports writers file hundreds of columns per year trying to guess what Player X will eventually sign for. It comes with the territory.
But now we can get a glimpse of how these negotiations really go; thanks to the cooperation of our panel of agents.
First and foremost, as Kawam puts it, “every negotiation is a little different. Sometimes you negotiate with a General Manager and other times with an Assistant General Manager. Everyone’s personality is also a little different, so it’s essential to know who you are dealing with before the negotiation starts. Luckily, I have Bobby Orr, Rick Curran, and Mike Curran to rely on for counsel.
“There is much research that goes into negotiating a deal because you have three different marketplaces, each with relevant comparables – Entry-Level, Restricted Free Agent, and Unrestricted Free Agent contracts. As an agency, we spend a tremendous amount of time doing research, identifying relevant comps, forecasting the salary cap, and what a player’s value is to a specific team or in the marketplace – all in hopes of securing our clients the best contracts.”
Along with the level of research also comes agents taking into account a multitude of factors.
“When you have a player who’s about to go through a contract negotiation, you have to understand what the team’s structure is,” said Agent X. “What the team’s cap is. You need to know what their finances are. What their depth chart is.”
Those are factors the agent and player can’t control. However, a player and his agent can control their side of the negotiations; within reason of course. If a player and his agent come to the bargaining table with reasonable asks they are more likely to get a deal done, but it’s not guaranteed.
“If you have two willing parties, a player wants to stay in a city and a team wants to sign them,” Sheehy explained. “Then, usually, that’s when you negotiate and you find a way to get a deal done. As an agent, you advise the player on what you think, where you think things can be, what type of deal you should consider. Once you talk to the team, you always go back to the player and you let the player know. It’s his career.
“Negotiations don’t always go the way you want them to. There are always two sides to a story. So the player needs to understand what the team is saying as well. Teams have needs and players have needs. You have to talk about all those situations. And, I think, going into a deal, both sides need to fully understand what the other side is looking for; in a reasonable manner. If one side is not being reasonable, well, then the other side isn’t gonna wanna get a deal done. That can happen as well.”
“Negotiating a contract isn’t just us talking to a team,” Simon added. “Negotiating contracts is us talking to the player, explaining his rights under the CBA, going through his statistics, his comparables, what his potential contract could look like, planning out different scenarios on term.
“A big part of the negotiating process is knowing everything there is to know about your player, because in order to be a successful negotiator, you have to be as prepared as possible. You can’t walk into a negotiation with a club and just say, ‘we want 3 million for this player because we think he’s good.’ You obviously have to have as much justification as possible and you have to be ready to counter any criticisms the club may have on the player.”
Those criticisms can sometimes make or break a deal if the player, or the team, feels the other side has crossed a line. In those situations that’s when you often see the two sides get rather chippy with each other in public, via interviews and various news outlets. And while it’s the agent’s job to represent the player, it is also the agent’s job to try and be the liaison between the two sides to prevent that chippiness from getting in the way of a deal.
With that being said, ladies and gentlemen, you now know most of what you need to know about the jobs and lives of NHL Player Agents.
