The conference room at the Newport Sports Management office, just outside Toronto, had pretty much emptied on this July afternoon in 2010, but then-Lightning assistant GM Julien BriseBois and GM Steve Yzerman stuck around.
Little did they know how much the next few minutes would change the course of their franchise.
There were photos on the wall of Newport’s top hockey clients, which look like a “Who’s Who” of the NHL (Brad Marchand, P.K. Subban, Steven Stamkos and Alex Pietrangelo are currently repped there). There was a big-screen TV. Some leftover wrappers remained from lunch the group of agents and execs had ordered.
Yzerman and BriseBois were in town catching up with a handful of agents, like Don Meehan and Pat Morris, as free agency loomed. Yzerman had just been hired by new Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, and the Hall of Famer brought BriseBois in as his right-hand man. They had a ton of work to do with the NHL club, but they also had to rebuild the AHL program pretty much from scratch.
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