Friday, August 04, 2006

From Rags to Riches



Come with me as follow the path of Chris Snow from UUTV to the front office.

Bill, Smist and I worked with Snow at UUTV in Syracuse our senior year. He was a quiet freshman.

After graduating in 2003, Chris covered the Minnesota Wild for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

After that he went to work at the Boston Globe. He became one of their baseball writers and he of course covered the Red Sox.

Minnesota GM Doug Risebrough was impressed with Snow and the two kept in touch after Snow moved to Boston.

Earlier this year, the Wild hired Snow as their director of hockey operations.

``They have a need and they were willing to think outside the box," Chris said ``I've done nothing in the sport, but these are people I believe in. I like the sport and I like their vision."

Snow's duties will include monitoring rosters and salary commitments of 30 NHL teams, and assisting with player contracts, arbitration research, and statistical analysis.

``It looks like anybody can be in a front office," joked Terry Francona. ``Apparently it's not that tough."

``This is in vogue in sports now," said second baseman Mark Loretta. ``Baseball's been going with young whiz kids as GMs. Maybe hockey is taking a page from that. Good for Chris."

``That's pretty funny," said Tim Wakefield.

``Can he skate?" asked Trot Nixon.

``Who's Chris?" said Manny Ramírez.

2 comments:

Derek said...

Great story although I’m surprised he didn’t go to a hockey school and become a graduate assistant with a hockey program. The jump from journalism to sports ops is unusual. I however have a Chris Snow anecdote.



He is a FOT (Friend of Thamel) and I played poker with him once. When he was with the DO he wanted to write a column on courtstorming the year fans were storming the court after wins against Rutgers. I sent an email to him, Thamel and a few others with suggested punishments for inappropriate courstorming (e.g. No free Tacos if 75 points are scored, No Orange Girl (KeriAnn) for the rest of the season). He loved it and asked to use my ideas in his column. I said no problem but the Orange Girl reference is a must because KeriAnn gets a kick out of writers mentioning her in the DO. He runs all my ideas in his column EXCEPT KeriAnn’s mention. I am still bitter.

Anonymous said...

Good for Chris. I guess Paul, Smist and I need to step up. Let me move my Emmy out of my way and I'll get right on that.
Just playin! Way to go Chris. That's really impressive, probably unheard of. I hear Latrell Spreewell is still looking for work after his last job in Minnesota.