NHL
Ray Shero was never the star of his own story.
His father, Fred, coached the Philadelphia Flyers during their 1970s Stanley Cup heyday. His mentor, David Poile, is a Hockey Hall of Fame builder. His lone championship as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins coincided with Sidney Crosby’s first. His last NHL job was advising one of his proteges, Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin. He was born into a shadow, then overshadowed by those he worked for and with along the way.
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Shero, whose death at 62 was announced by the NHL on Wednesday, should not be miscast as a supporting actor or secondary figure. Instead, he should be remembered for putting in the work — a college hockey standout turned agent who, after seven years representing NHL players, spent 13 seasons as an assistant GM — before modernizing a Penguins organization that Crosby would lead to unprecedented success in the NHL’s salary-cap era.
Shero may have been the scion of a hockey legend, but he had nothing handed to him by the sport.
“I think that’s a good angle on Ray,” said Poile, who hired Shero as assistant GM of the expansion Nashville Predators in the late 1990s and worked alongside him with Team USA for the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. “It’s hard to grow out of your dad’s shadow. But it’s what you have to do if you want to establish your niche — and Ray certainly did that.”
The Penguins selected Crosby first overall in 2005 after adding Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury in the previous two drafts. Yet the organization was flailing when Shero was hired in May 2006. Office space at the Civic Arena was so limited that Chuck Fletcher didn’t get a designated spot when Shero hired him as assistant GM. Nor was there much of a budget for players’ equipment and meals, let alone small gestures that Shero insisted were necessary — such as sending flowers to the wife of a player who signed as a free agent.
“He totally changed our culture,” said Tom McMillan, a former vice president of communications with the Penguins. “You don’t snap your fingers and let that happen. You have to have a program for it. He transformed the way we were run.”
One of Shero’s first big decisions involved a contract extension for Ryan Whitney during the 2007 offseason. Still learning his way around the relatively new salary cap, Shero solicited the counsel of Jason Botterill, a business-savvy former hockey player then working in the NHL central registry. Botterill, who had retired because of concussions but returned to college for an MBA, recommended alterations to the structure of the proposed contract for Whitney.
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In addition to hiring Fletcher the previous summer, Shero had recently supplemented the hockey operations staff with Tom Fitzgerald, a former NHL player. The lower-revenue Penguins weren’t known for lavish spending. The replacement for Civic Arena, the NHL’s oldest building, was three years from opening.
Selling ownership on another front-office hire might have scared off a GM with all of a season in the big chair. Shero, though, was so impressed by Botterill’s suggestions on the deal Whitney eventually signed — the first major deal awarded to a Penguins player since Jaromir Jagr in the late 1990s — that he pushed his bosses to create a new position. Botterill was hired, becoming the Penguins’ cap guru and also taking on an active role in scouting and management of their AHL affiliate.
“He was the best, an amazing mentor,” Botterill said in a text message. “He gave my family so much.”
Shero viewed the manager role as a custodian of a city’s hockey franchise — a team, but also a family. As with many heads of family, Shero wanted to treat people well while also preparing for them to move on.
“Hire good people, let them do their jobs, and be ready for them to leave,” Shero once said, “because if you bring in enough good people they’re going to get other opportunities.”
In the late 2000s, the Penguins were known for their “Foundation Four” of players: Crosby, Malkin, Fleury, and Jordan Staal, who spearheaded the team’s run to the 2009 Stanley Cup. There was also a formidable four atop hockey operations with Shero, Fletcher, Fitzgerald, and Botterill.
Fletcher, Fitzgerald, and Botterill each went on to become GMs of other franchises — as did Guerin, who joined Pittsburgh in a developmental role in 2011, a year after retiring from playing.
Shero’s run with the Penguins ended in May 2014, a year after he was named the NHL’s GM of the Year. He’d lost a power struggle with the CEO, but it was a testament to his eye for talent that his three top lieutenants (Fitzgerald, Botterill, and Guerin) not only interviewed to replace him but also were retained under Shero’s successor, Jim Rutherford.
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“He left me a great staff and a great roster, I would tell him that when I saw him,” said Rutherford, who burnished what would become a Hockey Hall of Fame career with Cup wins in 2016 and 2017.
“I couldn’t have come into a better situation than what Ray left me in Pittsburgh.”
Shero was closer to players than most GMs allow themselves to become; no greater example exists than his fierce protection of Crosby during the player’s concussion saga in the early 2010s. “I’m not thinking about Sidney Crosby the hockey player,” Shero said. “I’m doing what’s best for Sidney Crosby the person.”
Shero was the same way with his assistants, mentoring them as Poile had with him. Three years into Shero’s second GM act with the New Jersey Devils, which started in May 2015, Fitzgerald was a finalist for the Wild’s opening after Fletcher was fired, going through two rounds of interviews before ultimately not getting the job. A year later Minnesota was again searching for a new manager and asked the Devils for permission to speak with Fitzgerald. Shero refused.
“Ray didn’t want me being used, he protected me by not letting me interview; he told me I could take the job if they offered it, but not for an interview,” Fitzgerald said. “He didn’t want me to be seen as that guy who interviewed twice for the same job and didn’t get it.
“A couple of years later, I’m replacing that guy when he’s fired. I’m getting my big chance, and it’s at his expense. I felt awful. Ray called me after he found out, laughed, and said, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have blocked you from Minny — look what it got me.”
In delivering the punchline, Shero laughed so loud that Fitzgerald took the phone off the speaker setting so nobody in the Devils’ front office could hear.
Shero casually told stories, enhanced by expletives, that would leave those who heard them dumbfounded. He dropped famous names, even once recounting a story to McMillan of his dad talking to Art Ross.
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Yes, that Art Ross.
“Ray was intense, he was deeply competitive — but that laugh, his humor, was there every day, bad or good,” Poile said. “It’s one of the reasons you can’t find anybody to say a bad word about Ray.”
Longtime player agent Allan Walsh said Shero used his humor to ease tense contract negotiations. That didn’t stop when Shero was working with the Wild, under Guerin, as an advisor.
Walsh learned of Shero’s death while boarding a flight from Los Angeles to Saint Paul, Minn., for Fleury’s final home start with the Wild on Wednesday night. He, like many in the hockey community, was flattened by the news.
Walsh said Shero “brokered Fleury joining the Wild” in March 2021.
“He kept that thing on track until it happened,” said Walsh, adding that he wasn’t sure why a person with Shero’s resume was never hired to oversee another NHL franchise.
“After New Jersey, he should have still been in big demand. If a team was looking for an experienced hand to be a president and mentor a younger GM, he was the guy.”
Shero was reportedly a candidate to join the Flyers as their president of hockey operations before that job went to Keith Jones in 2023. Had it happened, Shero’s last hockey act may have provided a cinematic, full-circle moment.
Hanging on a wall along the media level at Wells Fargo Center is a black-and-white picture of a faceless boy gazing upon the Stanley Cup. Everybody always assumed it was Shero, who would have been somewhere around the boy in that picture’s age when the Flyers’ Broad Street Bullies ruled the NHL with Fred Shero as their coach.
Was it really young Ray?
Shero’s reply depended on who asked the question. If it was someone with the Flyers, the boy in that picture was definitely him. Colleagues with the Penguins, peers for other NHL clubs, and scouts were more likely to hear a different version.
“F— if I know,” Shero would tell them. “I guess it could be. That’s a great story if it’s me, right?”
(Photo: Paul Sancya / AP Photo)
An award-winning sports journalist, Rob Rossi has reported on the Pittsburgh Penguins and National Hockey League since 2004. He has covered almost 2,000 NHL games, including over 150 in the playoffs and four Stanley Cup Final series. He also has covered two Super Bowls and multiple MLB All-Star Games. He sits on the executive board of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association, and chairs its Pittsburgh chapter. He joined The Athletic in October 2018, and co-founded its Mental Matters resource group. Follow Rob on Twitter @Real_RobRossi
