Education! Education! Education!

Today’s NHL players are younger, stronger, faster, more skilled and more complex than ever before. As such, their agents, who are their handlers, Guardian Angels, Fairy Godparents and more, all rolled into one, have to be more focused and on top of things than ever before. With how much the game of hockey has changed, at all levels, agents are no longer strictly contract negotiators. No, now they are a jack of all trades and must be as adaptable as possible. 

The number one way for agents to best serve their clients, especially the younger ones, is to educate the players on how to handle a wide variety of situations, many of which the older generations of NHL players never had to deal with. 

From the ever-changing media landscape to the new relationship between The CHL and The NCAA to more specialization at hockey’s youngest levels to a growing divide between the older and younger generation of NHL players, agents have their hands full 24/7/365. 

So, in order for us to best learn how agents’ jobs and responsibilities have evolved along with the game, Blittner’s Blue Line has convened a panel of six certified agents, each with varying degrees of experience, to educate us (and all of you readers) about a number of key changes across the hockey world. 

Our panelists are (in no particular order): Jeff Boston (Roy Hockey Group); Darryl Wolski (2112 Hockey Agency); Rocco Cammarata (The Famiglia/I-C-E Hockey Agency); Patrick Bedell, Esq (The OT Sports Group, LLC); John Kofi Osei-Tutu, Esq (The OT Sports Group, LLC); and Bobby Gauthier (The OT Sports Group, LLC).

The first topic we’re going to tackle is arguably the one with the most pitfalls. Up until the 2010s, social media wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today. Sure, MySpace was popular for a little while. Facebook was in its infancy. Twitter/X didn’t become big until 2009, but even that “breakout” was nothing compared to what it transformed into in the mid-2010s and now in the 2020s. Instagram wasn’t “born” until October of 2010, but didn’t really “explode” until after Facebook acquired it in 2012. And lastly, podcasting, while not unique to social media or any one platform, didn’t begin to overtake traditional media outlets until 2017. 

Therefore, NHL players like Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby were not overly burdened with the negative effects of social media. There were no young, dumb, teenage social media posts by them or their generation of players to one day come back and haunt them. However, the newer generation of NHL players like Jack Hughes, Connor Bedard and Matthew Schaefer have grown up with social media for essentially their whole lives. So, that means this younger generation of players is more susceptible to one day having social media posts come back and haunt them. 

That makes the job of agents all the more difficult. Back in the day, they didn’t have to worry about a 2am tweet or midnight Instagram post going viral. There were no comments on a friend’s podcast at 11pm that were going to go viral overnight and cause a media storm the next morning. 

Nowadays, with how rampant social media usage is, player agents have to educate their clients on the safest ways to use those platforms in order to avoid having one tweet, post, or comment cost them their careers. 

“I’ve been doing this job long enough to where, when I first started, social media was a thing, but it wasn’t like it is today,” Jeff Boston explained. “I feel like when social media first started, we had Facebook. Twitter was just starting. I feel like it was more pure. I don’t think people were using it to say the worst things in the world for attention, because that wasn’t really the way it worked back then. 

“So, it’s kind of evolved from initially getting players not to speak their minds completely and helping them understand that those words have consequences. I’ve had a lot of talks with guys over the years that, ‘Hey, if you tweet out an inside joke and the people on the outside that follow you don’t know it’s an inside joke, like that’s up for interpretation, that that can be a good thing or a bad thing. So don’t risk that. It went from those conversations early on to now, for a younger player, it’s keeping him off the toxicity of that. And by toxicity, I don’t mean people are bashing 15 and 16-year-old players. They do. But, thankfully, that’s not what that’s about. It’s about the parents who are making it seem like their kid’s a surefire player in The NHL. It’s about these scouting services that are ranking 10-year-olds on one to five stars. 

“It’s almost like removing the pressure of that and getting them to refocus on the love of the game and enjoying the game and getting better at their craft. That’s kind of how it goes with young players. I will say, the young players who I work with, it feels like they’re more and more adverse to social media. It’s almost swinging back. When I recruit a young player now, the majority of the time, I look at their Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is, they’re not super active. There’s a couple posts a year, maybe. They’re friendly with people in comments, but it’s not five years ago when people were posting every day.” 

“On our end, it’s just making sure that the players are really aware of their surroundings,” Bobby Gauthier chimed in. “They’re aware of how close attention people are actually paying to them. The higher the profile, the more attention that there is. But it’s just educating them, right? And ultimately, kind of making sure that they, like from a brand standpoint, yes, you wanna promote your brand on social media, which is amazing and it’s a great opportunity, especially for these young athletes and college athletes right now. But it’s just educating them. I think it’s pretty simple. 

“Even when it comes down to commenting on other people’s posts or liking certain posts. I really do just think it comes down to educating the player and letting them know that there’s always gonna be eyes on you. I always use this example. I don’t think you could ever look up and see a player like Sidney Crosby with a beer can in his hand. I don’t think you can even find a single picture of it, right? So you educate your players, with a profile player like that and it’s eye-opening in the sense of, ‘Hey, this is the best to maybe ever do it. Look at how clean his image is.’ That’s an example that can help as well.”

Sometimes, more than just educating players is necessary for the agents. They also have to have luck on their side when it comes to the pitfalls of social media.

“I’m lucky,” Darryl Wolski exclaimed. “I have a really good girl who works for me and she monitors guys’ Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchats for me. She’ll always tell me if she thinks there’s something that’s a little bit offside. I’m lucky with my core group of clients that most of them are just not that active on social media. Honestly, I’m trying to think of the last guy I had who was really active on social media. I can’t even think of who that was, ’cause like I said, most of my guys, they just observe it. They don’t really participate in it. 

“But I did have an issue about 10 years ago. I had a player in the Western Hockey League who was a high draft pick and the team called me up saying, ‘Have you checked out this guy’s Twitter account?’ I said, ‘No.’ At that time, I didn’t have anyone working for me who checked on social media. I said, ‘No, why?’ The team said, ‘Well, go check it out.’ I looked at it and went, ‘Oh boy.’ What this guy said was, ‘All women are b******s and w****s.’ Well, I phoned the guy’s dad up. The dad, of course, goes crazy. So, anyway, the kid shuts all the social media down within three hours. So problem averted, but not really averted. This kid was a second-round draft pick. He never played a game for that team. Actually, he never played a game in The League.”

On the opposite side of that, as Rocco Cammarata said, “I’ve been really blessed. My players are pretty darn good. A lot of my players are kind of quiet. So I personally never really had a situation like that. I’ve heard stories of that. But, for me, I’ve really never had a situation like that where it’s been bad. Do I pay attention to those things? Yes, I do. In fact, with my younger guys, especially now, I’ll say, ‘Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have that picture up of you guys. Even if there isn’t any alcohol or isn’t anything involved, maybe just you guys shouldn’t have a picture up of you guys on a boat on the lake or whatever.’ I just feel as though a lot of that stuff matters.”

Again, it all goes back to EDUCATION! For as lucky as agents can be with having well-mannered clients, the danger of social media is ever present. And that’s why the agents themselves need to be well-versed in it.

“So, I wasn’t an agent 15 years ago,” John Kofi Osei-Tutu, Esq began. “I am 36 years old and I came of age mostly having social media. I think that one of the things that has been helpful for me to distinguish myself from some of the other agents is kind of being conversant and understanding the world that the younger athletes live in. 

“But I have seen the good and the bad that come with players and social media. It’s paramount that at a very early stage in these young people’s careers, they understand that it can be used to really enhance their career, but it can also be detrimental. So we spend a lot of time teaching players how to go about using social media and the significance of how they hold themselves out to the public…Everything is a teachable moment. One of the biggest roles that an agent can have, particularly for young athletes, is to teach. So we don’t miss those opportunities. It’s always better to learn from other people’s mistakes and avoid making your own.”

Patrick Bedell, Esq summed up the social media portion of our education best. “We’re in a time where being a representative, being an agent, is much more than what it was. What it was, to a large respect, was you’re on-ice contract and on-ice concerns. Right now, those days are over. The days of picking your head up when it’s time to negotiate a contract and then putting it back down afterwards are done. There’s a whole ecosystem that exists beyond your on-ice contract and hockey’s catching up. 

“Other sports have been well in front of this landscape shift. The major players and the people who are gonna survive on the other side of this landscape shift that exists beyond social media and I mean, we’re seeing it with the college hockey change, is indicative of that. Like, with NIL and everything that comes with that. The CHL floodgates (are) opening. It’s all a part of the same landscape shift. So the agents who can navigate this and be savvy enough to keep their head up and manage everything, the A to Z, are gonna be the ones who are successful on the other side.”

That’s a great way to segue into our next challenge for agents: the new agreement between The CHL and The NCAA that has opened more doors for young hockey players than there have ever been. 

“The biggest thing right now is just the amount of options that players have,” Boston explained. “Going back, pre-rule change, I would always spend a lot of time with young players going over The CHL versus The NCAA paths. And not just the hockey aspect, but the timeline, how those situations play out and just kind of what to expect for each route that’s there. It’s a lot of assessing where a player’s at, to say, ‘Hey, is this a player who is gonna need to continue to develop till he is 24? Is this a player who may be ready for pro hockey at 20? Is he a player who is gonna get a lot of attention during The NHL Draft? Is he a player whom I believe in, who maybe is a better free agent than a draft player at that time? 

“So, it’s the amount of options. Thankfully, it’s not such a detrimental decision anymore at 15 to go to The CHL versus stick it out for The NCAA, but there still are just so many nuances in the paths. Every option that a player has, we’re thorough. We learn about what it looks like for the player, what it’s looked like for other players and we try to give as much information to the families as we can, so we’re all comfortable and educated on the decision.”

All those options have created a lot of homework for the agents to do and then they have to present their findings to the players and their families, almost like how they would present a project in school in front of the entire class.

“I would say every player is situational,” Gauthier began. “Every situation is situational right now. Everything is a little bit of a moving target as we kind of sort through The CHL, The NCAA, The USHL, the best routes to prepare yourself to get to The NCAA to be the best college player that you can. You’re now seeing, for the most part, that the best players in Major Junior are going to college, right? 

“So I think it’s helping align a pathway that helps the high-end players in Canada play against very high-end competition up until they’re 18 years old and then it’s time to go to college, right? So, that’s the next step is the college route, how to get them prepared and how to help them make the right decision. To me, it all comes down to what’s best for the player. It’s what’s the track record of the development with The USHL team versus The CHL team? What’s the plan for the player? How are they going to help get the player ready for college? Again, I think it’s all situational. 

“Both The CHL and The USHL are very, very good leagues. And obviously, now we have a little bit more to think about before making some of these decisions with American-based players, who now have the option to go to The CHL. It’s really just peeling the onion back and having a conversation with both organizations, who own their rights in The CHL and USHL, to ultimately determine the best situation for the player. 

“I don’t want to say it’s rocket science, but there’s definitely homework to be done. We can’t just make a decision based on, well, a high-end USHL team owns their rights, so they gotta go to The USHL, because a certain team in The USHL or in The CHL, they may not see a certain player as another high-end profile player that they had prior. Again, it just comes back to the educational piece of what the options are, what’s gonna be in front of the player, giving them the information and then, between the player, the family and ourselves, making the best educated decision for the player.”

Okay, so perhaps you don’t need a degree in “rocket science” to sort through the changes to The CHL and NCAA relationship, but you certainly need guidance. 

“Now, the differences between The CHL and The NCAA have become more aligned with each other,” Wolski explained. “But, before it was a decision. Like, at 14 years old in the Western Hockey League, you have to sign a contract. You sign what’s called an education agreement. So, if you’re a first-round draft pick of the Vancouver Giants, they’re gonna give you a contract to sign. Well, at this time, maybe you don’t need an agent, but you probably need a professional person to look that contract over and make sure that you know what your son is getting into is good. Because, at one time, once you signed that CHL education agreement, well then you could never play NCAA.”

Well, now that the “Forbidden Door” (that’s for all you wrestling fans out there) between The NCAA and The CHL has been opened, it’s more important than ever for agents to fully understand what each opportunity within each program and team means for their players. 

“I’m also a practicing lawyer,” said Osei-Tutu. “As are some of the other guys on my team. I know some other prominent agents in the business who not only have a law license but actually use it. But I think understanding the immigration rules, understanding The NCAA compliance rules, the municipal, state and federal NIL rules is critical. 

“Remaining wholly compliant when players are compensated for using their name, image and likeness, being able to show value to the player as they’re going through this constantly evolving landscape that we know what the rules are, we know how the rules are applied and we have an understanding of the implications of things like the house settlement is critical. So, from that side of things, it’s been interesting and constantly changing. A bit of a moving target. 

“But, on the other end, when it comes to players having to make critical decisions on navigating their career, I think it’s great. There’s a lot of people who are upset about NIL, who are upset about The CHL wall coming down and upset about the fact that now CHL players are going into The NCAA. To me, more options are always going to be better for the athlete. It is how the athlete will always have the best opportunity to realize their true value. That’s our job, to get our players compensated at what their true value is. And I don’t necessarily mean that from an earnings perspective. 

“But, if you’re a top player and you have the option to develop in The CHL and sign an NHL contract or develop in The NCAA, you get to have conversations that aren’t just, ‘How much money are you paying me?’ It’s, ‘Where am I gonna have a better opportunity to demonstrate my skillset?’ Five years ago, you couldn’t be involved in those conversations the way that you can now. 

“So, if you have more options, you have more control. I think that the players deserve to have more control and ownership over how they develop and where they develop. It doesn’t hurt that now they also can be compensated for their labor earlier in their career, because you’re not just risking injury once you turn pro, you’re putting your body on the line well in advance of signing a big deal as an NHL player.”

“More options” is music to players’ ears. And as Osei-Tutu pointed out, that’s not just in reference to their potential earnings. Having more paths available for development is extremely helpful because it allows players to find the right situation to hone their craft. And once more, we’ll lean on Bedell to wrap up this part of our discussion as he summarizes how agents are dealing with the changes to the relationship between The CHL and The NCAA.

“This goes for branding and NIL deals,” Bedell began to explain. “This goes for marketing the top players. This goes for the decision-making, down to the granular level, of where are you gonna play at 14, 15 years old, all the way up. This is about having your pulse on the situation and landscape. We felt that last year. People who paid attention have realized that this was inevitable. 

“I remember saying to people, years ago, ‘You all do realize this is where we’re headed?’ Once NIL became what it was and those rulings took place, it was inevitable that we’d be where we are today. So, by paying attention, reading everything, understanding everything and that’s why people have law degrees, things like that matter. Last year, we saw how massive the development pathway changed midseason. Guys jumping ship from The USHL to The CHL. The league’s trying to adapt to chaos as it goes. It’s crazy how many scouts, coaches, general managers and beyond were blindsided. People panicked.

“It was a chaotic time, but I think the people who were able to manage it effectively were the ones who kept their finger to the pulse and were aware of those granular details that they needed to be aware of. You hear a lot about agents who are very hands off and you hear about other agents who are focusing on those very, smaller, more day-to-day decision-making options or decision-making pathways that present themselves. It’s being aware of all of it and making sure that you’re agenting the right way. You’re not over-agenting. You’re not too hands-off. You are being just right.”

Speaking of being “just right” and not being too hands-off or too hands-on, agents are more and more having to deal with younger and younger kids as numerous 12U and 14U hockey showcases and tournaments have sprung up over the last several years. That means that agents are having to decide between potentially recruiting younger players than what they’re comfortable doing or potentially missing out on a prospective new client. 

“When I first got in the business,” Wolski reminisced, “I remember chasing Quinton Howden. And he was 12 years old. I went to his parents’ house and met up with him when I first came into the business. I remember my friend said, ‘How old is he?’ At the time, Quinton Howden was 12. And they’re going, ‘You’re meeting a 12-year-old. Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘It’s not illegal. There’s no rules about it.’ 

“So I went and met with Quinton Howden and met with his parents. Quinton ended up being a first-round NHL pick, played some games, played for Hockey Canada and played World Juniors and stuff like that. Quinton turned out to be a pretty good player. His brother, Brett, plays for the Golden Knights and just signed a contract extension. But, once again, those are the players who are the 0.00001. That’s the math of things. 

“I think that now, a lot of people get agents to brag about it. They do. They go, ‘Oh, I got an agent.’ It’s like, say, now you got a trainer. ‘I got a trainer. I got a guy who works on mental wellness. I have a woman who does edge speed skating. I got a guy who teaches me martial arts.’ 

“It has become a massive industry. It’s a massive, massive industry at so many different levels. Like I said, all those kinds of things I just talked about, mental wellness coaches, UFC, mixed martial arts coaches who teach how to fight, all these different things are out there and parents sign up for them. 

“They go for it because and I always tell people the difference between, say, me and you sitting beside each other in a locker room is really small. So, how to make myself stand out above you? Well, I have to do these MMA classes. I gotta do certain yoga things. I gotta do these things. I gotta do Pilates. I gotta be more flexible than you. I gotta have a better trainer. I gotta be able to lift more. I gotta have better supplements. It’s a full-time job.”

On the other side of things are agents who refuse to scout and recruit players at such a young age. 

“It doesn’t affect me at all,” Cammarata said about scouting and recruiting kids at even younger ages. “I don’t buy into that whole recruiting at that age. I just think that there’s so many factors that go into it. I hear those stories all the time and for me, personally, I just can’t get behind that. I can’t start recruiting at that age. I don’t believe in it. However, I will say this and I say this to my new recruits or someone who I’m trying to land. I say, ‘Listen, five years ago or 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because these kids are like 15, right?’ I’m like, ‘We would be having this conversation when you are 17 or 18, you know?’ 

“But just the way the climate of hockey is these days, where everybody, it’s a business first, right? It always has been, but now more than ever and everybody has figured out how to make money in the game of hockey. So, I personally say that guys like me, who truly do care about the player and the family. It’s one thing to come across a guy like me and to use my services, because I’m always gonna look out for you. And that’s not always the case in this hockey world, because there’s a heck of a lot of money grabs out there. 

“You’re talking about the tournaments and showcases and I mean, gosh, there’s so many of them and these families, they spend and players spend so much money on ’em. And they don’t need to. If they get a good guy behind them who can use some experience and influence in their career and guide them in the right direction and put them on a good pathway and a good plan moving forward, that really cuts out all those money grabs. 

“That cuts out families and players having to pay exuberant amounts of money to be seen. Because, let’s face it and I always say this, players are watched and players are scouted during the season, not in the off-season.”

All this over-scouting and recruiting is due to the over-specialization of the game at such a young age. Older generations of hockey players didn’t have speed-skating and power-skating coaches at 12, 13, 14 years old. These 12U and 14U showcases didn’t exist. As many of our agents on our panel said, there’s more money in the game now and while that can be a good thing, it can also be a bad thing as many people are taking advantage of young kids and their families, making them feel like they’re not putting their best foot forward if they don’t spend oodles of money to join these off-season events at the youngest possible ages. 

“I’m very selective about who I recruit,” Boston explained. “I have a different business model plan than a lot of agents at this point. If you go back and look through the years, the amount of times the best 12-year-old has ended up being the best 18-year-old has to be shockingly low. I was just at our agency meetings and I asked all the agents, ‘Just outta curiosity, when’s the last time you could remember, other than (Connor Bedard), a kid going first overall in the Bantam Draft and first overall in The NHL?’ 

“Obviously, players change, right? There’s 12-year-olds right now who, probably, no one’s heard of, who could be first-round NHL picks when that time comes around. That kind of plays into the summer tournaments, too. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the way those are going. 

“I do see value in a good summer tournament, but a lot of these companies, coaches, whoever it is, they’ve created this FOMO about these summer tournaments to where they’re convincing people that if you’re not spending 15 grand this summer, flying to California, flying to Nashville, flying to Philly on back-to-back weekends, that you’re not gonna get the exposure you need as a 12-year-old to play in The NHL, which if parents didn’t believe it, it would be hilarious. The fact that parents do believe it is ridiculous, right? 

“I always tell young players who I’ve worked with, ‘Hey, save that time, money and energy that you would spend on those summer tournaments every weekend and invest in the right coaches. I’m not saying every coach is, but there are a lot of really good skating coaches and skill coaches. There’s a lot of good trainers who work with kids at a younger age now. If you have the right person and you’re working on the things you need to, that can be the biggest plus you can make in a summer.”

“There’s a balance,” Gauthier posited. “Especially with younger players. They have a little bit of a comfort zone with who their current skills coach and skating coach may be. For us, it’s building a relationship with that coach and seeing what they’re doing and again, doing our homework on them. 

“If we feel there’s a better option, geographically, not geographically, pending the family’s capabilities, we make suggestions to help players work on their craft, work on their development. Is it edge work? Is it their stride? Is it power? Is it getting their legs underneath them to extend their stride? Is it the ability to handle pucks? Is it the ability to protect pucks? Do they need a video skills coach? 

“All of these things come into play. Our job at the end of the day, when we recruit our players, is to let them know that the suggestions we make are going to be what is in their child’s best interest. If we make a suggestion, it’s not to flip the world upside down, but due to our history and our path working with certain coaches, whether that’s on the bench or developmental coaches. There’s a reason why we make those suggestions.”

Again, it’s a delicate balancing act that agents have to go through. At the end of the day, all the agents can do is educate their clients and the families on what they feel is the right course of action. And sometimes that conflicts with what the rest of the hockey world is throwing in people’s faces. 

“As more money is put into the ecosystem, everything gets pushed younger and younger,” Bedell explained. “When it becomes such a business at 16 and there’s as much money infiltrating that area of their development, players are forced to turn into ‘pro athletes’ at 13 years old. Part of me dislikes that we’re forcing our young players to operate in that landscape. 

“It’s part of the reason why hockey is difficult for people who don’t have the financial resources, as it is, because at 14, the haves and have-nots start to separate. An agency only provides so much. It’s very hard, unless you’re elite, if your family doesn’t have money, to be able to make it…Those 12-year-old and 11-year-old hockey camps, these showcases, they’re driving at the fact that how much money there is to make off of the people who have money and the parents who have money, which is a really difficult landscape to be in for these young players.”

These money-grabs and over-specialization of the game at younger and younger ages is helping create a generational divide at The NHL level as well. The Athletic was the first to report on this during the middle of last season, as they found that the older generation of NHL players were still willing to go to bars for a drink after games to socialize and bond with teammates. Meanwhile, the younger generation of NHL players was more inclined to go back to their hotel rooms to play video games and, in some instances, use THC or CBD edibles to recover from the action on the ice. 

For agents, this divide is something they’re taking note of as they try to help their players look out for themselves while also making sure that they are fitting in with their team off the ice as well as on it. And again, this can be traced back to the specialized coaching at younger ages, as the younger generation of NHL players is more concerned with what they put into their bodies on a daily basis, especially if it will have an effect on their in-game performance. 

“The Athletic piece was really interesting,” Osei-Tutu explained. “The fact that they talked about the drinking culture versus the edible marijuana culture and I think every locker room is different, but you’ve gotta size up the room. There are teams where the nucleus of players is young and there are teams where the nucleus of players is older. We tell our players, ‘You’ve gotta be an individual, but you’ve gotta be part of the team.’ 

“But every single person is different. And regardless of who you are and where you fit in the totem pole or what contract you’re on, it is important that you build relationships with the support staff, the strength coaches, the media people, the captains and the leaders on the team. You wanna have real relationships with people and that doesn’t necessarily mean going out and tying one on after a big win. But it also means pouring into these relationships more than just, ‘Hey, the game’s over. I’m gonna go back and play Fortnite.’ We make the recommendation that people build relationships with not just the athletes on the team, but the greater team ecosystem. I think it’s critical.”

“It’s like, you see the old photos of Wayne Gretzky having a couple of Diet Cokes and some hot dogs before a game,” Wolski began. “Players today would be mortified ’cause they’re mixing a special protein drink or like, I know guys who won’t drink a cup of coffee. They’ll spill half the coffee out and they’ll mix it with half a cup of water, so there’s not as much caffeine. Guys are really dialed into this stuff. They’re plugged into this stuff and maybe to a fault.”

“Everything is so different,” Cammarata remarked. “Players used to come into training camp to get in shape. Now, they come in and they’re already in great shape. They don’t go out and drink beer. (The younger guys, especially), They go back and play video games. It’s just hard to wrap our minds around it (for the older guys). But there’s a lot of great things with that as well. Their bodies are always in good shape. They don’t have to worry so much about getting into trouble. So, I mean, that makes our job easy, obviously. But I’d certainly like to see a little more camaraderie amongst the fellas.” 

As we wrap things up, it’s time to get a little philosophical. As Newton’s third law of motion states, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Essentially, for as much good as some of these changes in hockey have done, they’ve also had some unintended consequences. But, on the flip side, some of the negative things that agents would have to deal with, like a player getting into a bar fight at three in the morning, are now slowly disappearing from the game and that’s a positive. 

So, all in all, the players may have the hardest jobs on the ice, but in having to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the hockey world, player agents definitely have the hardest jobs off the ice.