from Nicholas J. Cotsonika of NHL.com

John Mavroudis was vacationing in Seattle when a friend shared a link to a job posting. The NHL's newest expansion team, not yet named the Seattle Kraken, was looking for a data engineer.

Mavroudis had never played hockey or worked in the NHL. But he had grown up a hockey fan in the San Francisco Bay Area, played fantasy hockey and played NHL video games. He was a technical program manager at HelloSign, a Dropbox company, in the Bay Area. His resume was on his laptop.

What the heck? Why not?

"I just kind of blindly applied," he said.

Eric Mathiasen had been watching to see if the team posted anything. Maybe something in marketing?

Mathiasen had never worked in the NHL. But he had grown up a hockey fan in Vancouver and played fantasy hockey. He was a senior technical designer at Microsoft, working at the campus in Redmond, Washington, about 15 miles from the arena where the team will play starting in the 2021-22 season.

When he saw a posting for a developer, he applied.

"I just kind of jumped at it, and then I was, like, rereading it," he said. "I was like, this is actually in hockey operations. This is totally interesting. I never in my wildest dreams thought that the career I've had would lead to helping a hockey team make decisions or draft players."

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