Maybe if I had one of Brendan Shanahan’s appointment books/diaries I could remember more about the circumstances leading to our lengthy sit-down interview on the eve of the Maple Leafs’ 2015-16 season.
My digital calendar from Sunday, Oct. 4th shows only that my son had a hockey practice that morning. I guess my wife took him because I was hitting golf balls at Etobicoke’s Centennial Park when, stricken with a pang of guilt realizing I didn’t have anything to write for Monday, I texted a friend who handles media requests for MLSE’s top brass, to see if there was any shot at getting a few minutes with Shanahan before the Leafs’ opener that Wednesday.
In my defence, I’d been trying to arrange something off and on for months, but the timing had never worked out. This time it did.
“Can you be at his office for noon?”
It was about 10:30 a.m., if I’m recalling this correctly. That would leave me just enough time to go home, shower, change and get there, if I left right away. I looked sadly at the half bucket of balls. They looked at me. I checked the time again. I looked at the bucket. I sighed, picked up my clubs and headed for the parking lot like a real grown up. Of course this left me no time to prepare, other than a few notes I scribbled to myself in the parking lot across from the ACC.
I needn’t have worried. Shanahan is as intelligent a conversationalist as you’re going to find in this job, and I feel like I left our interview an hour later with a good grasp of where he’s planning to take the Leafs and how they’ll get there, so that’s what I wrote down in this piece:
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Excerpt: How Brendan Shanahan’s life lessons are shaping Maple Leafs
The leather-bound appointment book lies in the centre of his desk, the edges perfectly aligned. There is a cell phone, parallel with two television remotes, not one a degree out of place.
Around Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan’s office there are some pictures you’d expect from a Hall-of-Fame player turned executive (lifting the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings) and some you might not (shaking hands with Bill Clinton and Stephen Harper).
There are books on business innovation: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, and on sports innovation: “Big Data Baseball,” by Travis Sawchik.
But the 2015 edition of the brown, plush American Express appointment book takes pride of place. He fills it out himself, in ink, a habit he began when the high school graduate got his first real job, working alongside the league’s Ivy League trained lawyers at the head office in Manhattan. They go four years back now and the 2016 edition is already waiting at home.
He’s aware all this can be done digitally, but he likes the ritual and the permanence of the paper and pen.
“I’m more inclined to write stuff down, log things,” he says. “After you leave I’ll write down we spoke.”
Full Story: How Brendan Shanahan’s life lessons are shaping Maple Leafs
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