from Joshua Kloke of The Athletic,
Ryan Hartman walked into the Minnesota Wild practice facility with a sense of resolve. The nine-year NHL forward had been a healthy scratch the previous evening against the Philadelphia Flyers.
But righting a wrong was only one of the items on his to-do list.
“Today,” Hartman said, nodding while looking around the Wild dressing room, “is tax day.”
As he does once a month, Hartman will work his way around the Wild dressing room and collect money from his teammates.
The previous night, Hartman pored over a spreadsheet with updated tallies of who owes what. He sent out a flurry of text messages to teammates: “This is what you owe. I’m coming for you tomorrow.”
Call Hartman what you want: the taxman, the team treasurer, the fine master. Hartman has a volunteer position in charge of handling a consistently growing pot of money accrued from Wild players. Most teams require a player like Hartman because large amounts of money changing hands among teammates is a tradition in the NHL. That money is gathered in large part to encourage team building. Part of the money collected is because players voluntarily have put “money on board,” a practice of promising an amount of money before a game a player will owe should the team win, be it for playing in their hometown or, say, if they’re playing in a milestone game.
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