The show must go on

I’m writing this while sitting at a desk at the NHL head offices in New York. New York City. Behind me, under me, I can see the 6th Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, with all the people scurrying back and forth like ants, jumping in and out of taxis – very un-antlike behavior.

When I look up, I see a wall with the photos of all NHL captains this season, from Jonathan Toews to Nicklas Lidström to Mikko Koivu.

Ants and taxicabs.

I see the NHL.com editors sit hunched over their laptops, typing away stories about hockey, about the NHL, the greatest hockey league in the world. Their desks are covered with hockey memorabilia: towels, bobbleheads, media guides, bags, water bottles, pucks, and banners.

My desk is empty. There’s just a phone and a computer monitor. The shelves are empty, the waste basket is empty, and the board doesn’t have one note on it, just blue and red and green tacks to hold the notes that should be there.

The desk is empty, because it’s really not my desk. I don’t work here. For a few minutes, I can imagine what it would be like to come to work in this open landscape office in Manhattan, and write about the greatest hockey league in the world.

Like I’ve imagined for 20 years.

The first time I thought I had got a job at the NHL was in 1995. I had first got in touch with the league a year and a half earlier when the NHL brought the Winnipeg Jets over to Helsinki, my hometown, and the league’s vice president for new business development hired me as his man on the ground. Whenever Bryant needed a phone number in Helsinki, I found it. When he needed to get a hold of the mayor, I called her up. When he needed somebody to put together the tournament program, I translated and wrote articles for it. When he needed a second opinion about Finland, I was that.

We met for the first time in January 1994, at a hockey game I hadn’t intended to go to until he suggested that we could meet there. This after he’d left a message in my machine about having some work for me.

“Sure, I’m going to the game, absolutely,” I said. It wasn’t a lie because I had just decided to go.

“Excellent, I’ll see you there.”

“How will I recognize you?”

“I’m probably the only black guy in the arena,” he said, and hung up.

I spent the first period scanning the stands on the other side of the rink, the first intermission walking around the arena, the second period scanning the stands on the other side of the rink, and the second intermission running around the arena until I bumped into him. We shook hands, we talked for a short while, and I got hired.

Or, “hired.” There was never any talk about money, even if I did get paid when the project was done. Both in cash and in NHL hats.

And I was rewarded with a great friendship with Bryant.

That same fall, I kept helping him with small things: media monitoring, compiling information on European hockey nations and venues, and that sort of things.

In early 1995, my phone rang in the middle of the night.

“Were you sleeping?” Bryant said.

I’ve never answered “yes” to that question.

“Good, listen, there maybe an opportunity for you here at the League,” he said.

We both had known all along that my goal, my dream, my wish had been to get a job at the NHL. Not just as a helper guy. I had graduated from the university a few years earlier and as a business graduate, working with the NHL’s business development was almost beyond anything I had ever dreamt about.

“What I want you to do, is to fax me your CV, and we’ll tailor the job description so that you’re a perfect fit,” he said.

I couldn’t believe my luck. The next day, I faxed my (short) CV to the NHL, and then rode my bike to the library of the US Embassy in Helsinki, to read the classified ads for apartments in New York. I was told that the salary “wouldn’t get me very far in New York”, which I understood to mean that it would take me very far from Manhattan. But no matter, I was ready. I could live in the Bronx, or New Jersey.

I was going to the Show.

I didn’t tell anyone about my New York plans, because I didn’t want to jinx them. Instead, I read up on New York, and went back to the Embassy library for more classifieds. When a Finnish newspaper run a story about all the Finns in the NHL that season, with their faces placed on a map of North America, I cut it out and glued a photo of myself over New York.

A few weeks later, I got a call from Bryant. Would I be willing to come to Stockholm for a job interview and meet his boss who would then eventually make the hire? Of course. I booked a flight to Stockholm, and even a room at the same hotel that the NHL brass was staying. It may be needless to say, but the NHL brass does not stay in the cheapest hotels in town.

The day of the interview came. The NHL executives were in Stockholm because that’s where the 1995 World Championships were held, and they had people to meet. I landed at the Arlanda airport and as I walked through to get my luggage, I saw Bryant waiting for his luggage with a colleague.

Since we were staying at the same hotel, we shared a cab there, catching up, and talking about my meeting with them.

At the hotel, I checked in first. I could feel the excitement rise, and my heart beating a little faster. Then Bryant checked in, and last, Skip, his colleague. Just as Skip was getting his key card, the receptionist also said, “Oh, sir, there’s a letter here for you.”

My entire body went cold. My brain sent warning signals to my legs, my arms: “Bad news, bad news!”

Skip read the note, looked at me and said, “I have some bad news. Steve’s not going to be able to make it. He’s gotten ill in Paris, and instead of flying here, he went straight back to New York.”

My brain said: “Fight or flight? Awaiting orders.”

I said nothing.

There was not going to be a job interview. I was sitting in the most expensive hotel in the city that hosted the hockey World Championships, with little money, and no tickets to the games. But most of all, there would be no job interview.

My mother always says that when things take longer than expected, they also get more complicated. For me, however, it got very simple. No job interview, no job offer, no job. There was not going to be a new Finnish face on the map of the NHL. No new commuter on the A train.

Fast forward a few years. I had moved to Stockholm, and got a job at a custom publishing house. I had stayed in touch with Bryant and my first trip to New York was a 36-hour layover on my way from Montreal to Helsinki. My visit at Bryant’s included a four-stop cab tour of Manhattan, a party, and a Sunday breakfast at a quintessential coffee shop in the Village.

One day, my phone rang at around 5.30 in the afternoon. I was still in the office, because as a single guy, I was in no hurry to go home.

It was Bryant. He said there was another opportunity for me. The only thing, the only thing that I would need to do to make it happen was to look into the paperwork that would get me a green card into the US. I hung up and I sprinted to the desk of my best friend, Devin, the only other person in the office. I told him what had just happened, and we laughed.

Then I turned around and ran towards the elevator to go down to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. It was going to be a long night because, naturally, I would get to work right away.

On my way to the elevator, I couldn’t help but jump as high as I could with my fist raised. In a movie version of my life, that’s where the film would be paused, and the story would have ended there with me in mid-air, my fist up, with a big smile on my face.

Unfortunately, this is no movie, so I did come down from that mid-air fist bump. But I landed in Stockholm where a fine young lady with an elegant posture picked me up. Bryant left the NHL, but the friendship is alive and well.Then I made a career change and became a writer. I kept in touch with the league and now I am an occasional NHL.com correspondent.

Not really in the Show, and no New Yorker, but I’m fine with that.

My fifteen minutes are up. I unplug my laptop and put it in my bag. I put on my jacket, throw the bag on my shoulder, and follow my editor friend out. He’s filed his story, and we’re about to go for lunch.

Just before we leave the office area, I turn around to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind me.

I didn’t. The desk is empty.

6 thoughts on “The show must go on

  1. We both walked down memory lane yesterday, it seems. I’m not gonna say that I’m glad we ended up here and together, because I don’t think we have ended up at all. But I’m glad things turned out the way they did. And still are.
    Enjoy NY!

  2. Another great one. Lots of roads in life, and no one can say which is the right one. All you have is the one you took, and if you’re happy, you can’t ask for more.

    I’ve never answered ‘yes’ to the ‘were you sleeping’ question either.

  3. And now you have a big desk, totally full of stuff and tings and tangs as they say in Norway. You have no boss, no timetable and an espressomachine the look of a Cadillac. What more is there to want:-)

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