NHLPA UNLMT fostering desire to expand professional interests beyond hockey

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These NHL players arrive with ideas as diverse as the players themselves.

They come, still in the prime of their respective careers, curious about everything from taking university business courses to learning about craft brewing, exploring real estate sales and rental property development and documentary filmmaking.

Sometimes the players are like St. Louis Blues defenceman Colton Parayko, walking through the virtual doors of the NHLPA UNLMT program, armed only with the idea that they would like to learn more, do more, be more, while still living out their NHL dreams.

“And that's one of the great things about UNLMT, is that they expose you to so many different things and things that you might be interested in,” Parayko explained in a recent conversation. “You talk to other people within, various fields, different professionals in those fields, try to get to know what it's like to be in that field, stuff like that.”

What does Parayko, 31, hope to achieve through NHLPA UNLMT? The beauty of this initiative, years in the making but formally in place for just over a year, is that players can explore various avenues.

“I mean the goal for me I guess is, I don't know, it's not like I'm trying to find necessarily a career after hockey, it's more I'm trying to find my interests,” said Parayko who won a Stanley Cup in 2019 with the Blues and who earned gold with Canada at the recent 4 Nations Face-Off.

Parayko, who is from St. Albert, Alberta, and played at the NCAA level at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, also admits to being a pretty shy person in general, but that NHLPA UNLMT has allowed him to interact with professionals in different fields in a way that fits his own schedule and his own personality.

“My focus now is obviously 100% in hockey and to be the best hockey player that I can be, but at the same time this is a good opportunity for life lessons and sometimes it's better to learn about different things, outside of hockey where you can get your mind off of things,” Parayko explained.

In many ways, Parayko, who is taking an entrepreneurship course offered by NHLPA UNLMT through Stanford University, synthesizes why NHLPA UNLMT has quickly become a popular and critically important tool for players.

Since the NHLPA formally introduced the program aimed at connecting players to resources that can help them explore myriad interests away from the game, the number of players who have raised their hands to participate has grown exponentially.

Almost 200 players, roughly one quarter of all members, have embraced the idea that dedicating time to interests outside the game isn’t a sign of a lack of dedication or a signal that an NHL career is on the wane, but rather the opposite.

These players, some as young as 23, are learning what anecdotal data has shown program organizers – that being engaged in something away from the game doesn’t inhibit a player’s performance but rather complements their career in a way to allow them to better enjoy their professional hockey experience.

In other words, NHLPA UNLMT has provided that rarest of opportunities where, in fact, you can have it all. Right?

Dr. Jay Harrison ponders the idea.

The former NHL player turned clinical psychologist has been a key figure in the introduction of NHLPA UNLMT to members.

While Harrison doesn’t promise that NHLPA UNLMT can give players everything they want, he will tell them that they have nothing to lose by using NHLPA UNLMT to help broaden their interests away from the game.

He lived the theory himself, seeing his NHL career take on a second life after he discovered a passion for psychology and specifically the psychology of athletes.

“And I was a player who had a lot to say about this because I started to connect the dots of the value of what individual personal and professional development outside the game could do, not just to your transition readiness, but how it could actually impact your experience in the now,” said Harrison who played 372 NHL games while pursuing his master’s degree in clinical psychology.

Harrison has spent much of the last decade since retiring studying the psychology of athletes and how they can have success on the playing field while also enjoying mental well-being, two ideas, that for many players, have been mutually exclusive.

Harrison’s studies of North American athletes in a variety of sports were the first of their kind and the results played a significant role in the evolution of NHLPA UNLMT.

“Not life after hockey, life other than hockey,” Harrison explained. “The more connected, the more diverse, my interests and network are, and the more capacity I have to experience agency, the more likely I'm going to put the best version of my game on the ice. That's really what UNLMT is about.”

UNLMT isn’t about handing players a textbook and saying, ‘good luck on the exam.’

It’s about meeting every player that expresses some interest in the program on his own ground, where he is most comfortable.

Like Matt Benning.

Benning, like Parayko, took a detailed behavioral assessment that helped identify some of his potential interests away from the game.

The 30-year-old defenceman took that information and embarked on a real estate course and sat in on calls involving real estate professionals. He ended up buying an investment property, despite it not being something Benning really saw as a long-term interest.

Through NHLPA UNLMT, and through Benning’s connection to NHLPA UNLMT Personal Strategist, John Hierlihy, Benning focused his attentions on a future in business, perhaps in small industry in the Edmonton area. It’s something he watched his father, Brian, do at the end of his own NHL career.

“I wanted something very similar. And then when I saw the [UNLMT] program, I thought, wow, this is a great opportunity for me to, while still playing, use some connections and lean on the guys over there [at the NHLPA] to help me out and to explore,” said Benning who is currently with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization’s American Hockey League affiliate Toronto Marlies.

The father of two small children is now in regular contact with Hierlihy and sitting in on Zoom calls with various business professionals when his schedule allows.

“I don't have anything set in stone, but I have lots of lines in the water. And hopefully one can catch when it is time for me to step outside of hockey,” Benning explained.

There are two pillars of UNLMT that are kind of the “aha moment” for players.

First, there is the notion that players need to give themselves permission to think about something other than hockey. It doesn’t mean they’re not committed. It doesn’t mean their career isn’t going the way they want it to. The fact of the matter is that there is a lot of down time built into a professional hockey player’s life.

And the second tenet, closely linked, is that if a player finds something that is interesting to him outside of hockey, they more often than not find their performance on the ice improved.

They like the game more. They are better with their teammates, and they play better.

You still have to put in the work, that’s a given. But players shouldn’t feel that this is a conflict of interest, Harrison explained.

“Actually, this is all aligned with what you want,” Harrison said. “You get all that out of the way and you unlock and unleash this potential. Go. Do something awesome. And play great. Wow. To me, that's the great part about it.”

So, what does the future hold for NHLPA UNLMT, and by extension, for NHL players?

In some ways NHLPA UNLMT is a living organism, changing and shifting based on the virtually limitless number of ideas that players may bring to the table.

One of the goals moving forward is that when someone asks, “Hey, have you ever heard of NHLPA UNLMT?”, the answer is invariably a yes.

“So, one of my goals is to make sure that every single player, every single member of the NHLPA, is aware of UNLMT,” said Hierlihy, who has been working alongside long-time partner and fellow UNLMT Personal Strategist, Duncan Fletcher, and Harrison in shaping UNLMT.

“So, then it gets to the point where we are creating more and more of these stories of creating opportunity.”

There’s a finite number of NHL jobs but there’s also a natural turnover from year to year in the NHLPA membership with players, usually older, leaving the game and new, usually younger, players entering the league.

So, the number of players who can – and should – learn about and from NHLPA UNLMT will always exist. And with each passing year the resources that NHLPA UNLMT can tap into should continue to grow.

That’s another element of NHLPA UNLMT that is important for players to understand, that people in the ‘real’ world – businesspeople, entrepreneurs, academics, philanthropists, whoever – are almost always excited at the prospect of engaging with NHL players.

“It's easy for me to open doors because most people, most leaders, most successful people would love to talk to a professional athlete,” Hierlihy said. “So, their opportunity to build social capital is almost unlimited. And then once you start building your social capital, what happens is that you meet influential people. What you're doing, you're gaining access to interesting people.

“It's okay if you end up meeting someone who's super interesting and maybe they open a door that at some point may benefit you on a number of different levels,” Hierlihy added. “I think for some guys, it is, you know, eye opening. It's an outlet for you. And you really should do it. Because the opportunity is there.”

Because not all players want the same thing, the outcomes will be very different. But there are opportunities that start with simple introductions that do lead to relationships that can have a long-term impact on a player.

“I love it when you talk to a guy and they're like, ‘Oh my god, you know someone here?’ and then they have the conversation, they come back to me and go, ‘It was fantastic. Wow, I learned so much’,” Hierlihy said. “And then, it doesn't happen all the time, but there are some stories where it led to a real opportunity.”

All these things are connected to NHLPA UNLMT’s success. When a player gets involved and starts exploring something new and interesting and meeting new and interesting people, they naturally begin sharing that with their teammates or the guys they work out with in the summer or share an agent with.

Those kinds of experiences then lead, organically, to the word-of-mouth support of NHLPA UNLMT. Without it NHLPA UNLMT wouldn’t be enjoying the successes it has early in its lifecycle with the NHLPA.

“Then other players start to hear about it, right? And that's where we're starting to get to now, this word of mouth is becoming quite powerful, where they've had a good experience. And so, teammates are talking to other teammates. So, they just reach out, which was unheard of a few years ago,” Hierlihy said. “I don’t know if there’s anything more powerful than that.”

Benning, for instance, feels it’s part of his role as a veteran player to share what he’s learned with younger players who may struggle to come to terms with whether it’s okay or not to explore interests outside of hockey. That was especially true when Benning was with a very young San Jose Sharks team.

What is also becoming apparent with the passage of time is that the more players that get involved with NHLPA UNLMT, and then at some point leave the game, organically become part of the valuable bank of resources for NHLPA UNLMT for the next generation of players.

Like B.J. (or Brandon as he is often known to his business associates) Crombeen.

Crombeen predates NHLPA UNLMT by a few years, but he is a person that Hierlihy and his group often refer to when talking to NHLPA UNLMT participants who are interested in real estate investing and the business world.

“Last week, Duncan just put a current player in touch with him because B.J.’s been incredibly successful in private equity real estate since he left the NHL. And he's a tremendous resource for our current players interested in real estate,” Hierlihy said.

“He’s a friend to me personally, but he's a friend to the NHLPA and to UNLMT, and he will always take the call from a player and help them network and provide knowledge and his experiences and some guidance. And we use him all the time. We try to recreate those scenarios all the time.”

Crombeen first met Hierlihy and Fletcher when Crombeen was playing in the minors and the partners were working with the Professional Hockey Players’ Association – the union representing minor pro players. He is the executive director of private capital markets for real estate investment company Greybrook, and is the president of Delos Canada, an off-shoot of Greybrook that recently expanded into Canada.

“It’s easy to look back and say, ‘Hey, I wish I did this and I wish I spent more time here,’” Crombeen said. “So, it's great to be able to kind of share that and, obviously, any way I can help them out whether that be making a connection, making an introduction, giving them some insights from what I went through. It's always something I enjoy a lot.”

In the end, maybe it’s not the program that changes or morphs over time, but the players who walk through those virtual doors who will change and evolve.

Fletcher said he already sees a change in how players view themselves in the midst of their careers from five or 10 years ago. Part of that is due to the COVID-19 pandemic when so much interaction was done remotely.

“Athletes can identify these pathways into these initiatives where they may never have to leave home. It's all very flexible, and there really isn't necessarily the more traditional barriers to entry that may have existed five years ago,” Fletcher explained.

“I think you're seeing changes in how they're approaching their interests away from the game,” Fletcher added. “I think what you're seeing is these guys are now realizing, hey, I can be involved in a range of things outside of sport that isn't necessarily going to make me a worse competitor. In fact, it may help me. And I think that's one of the things that we've identified in our research is that in fact, if you are engaged in any of these activities, you're going to see probably some performance bump in some way, shape, or form. So, I think that's what you're seeing has sort of shifted the engagement landscape, because it's easier to get into it.”