How an NHL Team Travels

hello again everybody and welcome once again to another season of penn's pulse presented by s t bank i'm paul steigerwald pittsburgh penguin's ownership and management does everything in its power to create a first-class environment conducive to the success of the coaches and players now that we're back to a full 82 game schedule the penguins will travel more than 33 000 miles this season and play at least one road game against each of the other 31 nhl teams the precise planning communication and execution required to make the players feel at home on the road begins long before a puck is dropped here's an inside look at how the penguins fly card games get pretty loud and usually i don't last that long on the plane i'm cold pretty quick i have to bring my ipad on every trip no matter what it was my gaming system kind of came back on that now obviously the penguins like to dress for success so we had to ask who has the best style on the road i gotta go with tanger yeah tanger's pretty good i wouldn't tell him that but why let's hang it hurts to say but he'll be all about it now some people have fashion and things they like so it's not that i try it's just we don't no we can't give it a tanger so i'm saying kasperi kaepernick he's a little bit out there he's got some style that a lot of people are kind of you know like and don't like it's it's kind of polarizing you know so it makes it fun it's kind of like if you wear the blue or gray you stand out now if you're not wearing the bright one but yeah cappy's got some some good ones for sure with the penguins opening the 21-22 season with a trip to the sunshine state it got us thinking how does an nhl team successfully travel city to city my name is jim britt i am the executive director of the pittsburgh penguins foundation and have been since early 2020. in my prior role i was the director of team operations which i held from roughly 2012 just prior to the work stoppage through 2020. the director of team operations coordinate all of the logistics off ice so team travel arrangements immigration scheduling for ice time in pittsburgh and when traveling charter flights hotels ticket needs there's a bit of a player concierge service involved with that as well making sure the players and their families are comfortable here in pittsburgh helping them get relocated making sure that the team is settled wherever they may be but it was until the early 2000s that the penguins had experienced the luxuries of flying privately and the organization had decided it was about time to step away from traveling commercially after 9 11 it really became a significant security factor and at this point now for the ability to depart immediately after a game on a private flight and be in your bed that night wake up in the city that you'll be playing or practicing in the next day it's a competitive advantage after britt made the transition to his new role within the organization the team welcomed former manager of communications jason seidling as the new director of team operations jason is entering his third season in the position and he's learned quickly about the value of planning ahead so everything we do is planned out well in advance i mean some of these things months in advance so schedule typically comes out late june to early july so as soon as that happens you get right on the flight so all the flights are set by the middle of july and the next thing you set up is you set up the hotels mid august you get all 41 road games set and then as the season is going along you're working into details like buses at a hotel you're providing three or four meals throughout the day for the players so making sure all those banquet events are set menus are set in advance those are more fluid as the schedule goes on having worked in the industry and traveled with the team for more than a decade jason knows better than anybody that not everything always goes as planned and to expect the unexpected no matter how hard you try to plan everything out minute by minute you are going to have things that come up for us to be able to make those arrangements and accommodations i always looked at that at you know that was our game time that was time to to get down get ready show what we're worth so i joke with with jason seidling who's in the role now that you know that first year i probably got three years of experience with adding the covet in that year it absolutely felt that we felt like a seasoned veteran once we came back for that bubble everybody had questions we had no answers to there was no i couldn't just go to gym and ask player wants to go back to europe no flights there was no playbook for it some of the the stories are pretty well documented like jerome mcginla getting close to the deadline there was a lot of talk that jerome may move they reported during the game that the bruins had acquired jerome i was watching the game i had gone to bed i got a call an hour or two later from our assistant general manager jason bottero and he woke me up it was you know around midnight maybe 1am and he said hey jim we just traded for jerome aguinla i said no box he went to the bruins i saw it on the game and he kind of paused let me catch my breath and he said jim can you hear me and i said yeah box he said we just traded for jerome mcginla when jerome will be here uh really depends on the immigration process might take a couple days and that's what happens with uh canada the u.s player here we had a saturday afternoon game coming up so there was a frantic push to get his immigration paperwork done jerome will not be on our 23rd roster until his the immigration process approved his equipment got caught in customs so i remember having some conversations with fedex our corporate partner and and they moved mountains to get it done for us they got us as gear in time we ended up getting jerome in late on friday night he played in that saturday afternoon game and it was incredible and at right way please welcome to pittsburgh joe [Applause] brit was great at foreseeing most challenges headed his way but no one could have possibly anticipated what was coming next one of the extreme conditions for us was the horrific bombing in boston around the boston marathon the bombing happened on monday on patriots day we were scheduled to play the bruins i believe it was on friday evening so we're right outside boston commons in our hotel when the suspect was captured there was a loud celebration and a gathering i will always remember that national anthem several first responders on the ice and everyone in the building was standing and singing you know i get chills thinking about it now but uh what a special day not everybody is fortunate to have the the person that was previously in the role be so close i can never thank them enough we have such an incredible team of people behind the team behind the scenes who take so much pride in their job we want to worry about all of those details so that they can worry about hockey and if we've done it well then the players are able to shine and that's how it should be

Channel: Pittsburgh Penguins

Views: 507,390

Keywords: pittsburgh penguins, pens, sidney crosby, mario lemieux, jaromir jagr, evgeni malkin, ron francis, bryan trottier, jake guentzel, brian dumoulin, tristan jarry, matt murray, kris letang, alex letang, john marino, bryan rust, dominik kahun, marcus pettersson, hockey, nhl, national hockey league, ice hockey, stanley cup, pittsburgh

Id: uqlNCB_Vg8A

Length: 7min 0sec (420 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 29 2021