from Scott Burnside of The Athletic,

The NHL’s executive vice president, social impact, growth initiatives and legislative affairs, has been hunkered down in the family’s home in New Rochelle, New York, since the league paused on March 12. The New York City suburb was the local epicenter of the COVID-19 spread in the New York area.

Since George Floyd’s murder, having your family under one roof, what that’s been like for your family to share and to observe what’s going on in the wake of that.

We’ve had a lot of conversations about what is going to really be different about this moment. And I think we are hopeful and cautiously optimistic. My son is actually an anthropologist and a lot of his work is about anti-racism globally and with a particular focus on the Arab community in Africa, in Tunisia. So you can imagine having an anthropologist in the house, there’s some interesting conversations that we’re having. And my son-in-law is from Ireland and who grew up and spent most of his life in Ireland, so it’s been rich discussion and conversation about what all this means and what it’s going to be mean going forward.

If you look at your job and even in this short period of time whether you feel your role with the NHL is different than even when the pause began?

I don’t see it as different, Scott. I see it as a moment for us to really accelerate. I think that we have the listening ear right now of so many people in positions of power, white men in positions of power. There was something different. We’ve talked about a lot in my house what was the thing that was different about this moment? And I think it was the fact we are pausing. We have paused. And we had a different kind of attention maybe.

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