Career Save: Mike Richter and the NHL Winter Classic Sustainability Panel
January 13, 2010
The NHL | Winter Classic Panel photo: NHL
Let’s say you wanted to get a conservative columnist from the New York Times, a collection of business leaders and environmentalists and the support of a professional sports association together to talk about solutions related to business, sport and sustainability, a green panel, perhaps. What would you need? An act of god? Or in God’s absence, an NHL hall of famer with a deep and focused interest in green work. That might do it.
Enter Mike Richter.
If you don’t know his name, you don’t follow hockey. Mike played for the New York Rangers for thirteen seasons, distinguishing himself as one of the premier players in the league. Richter’s 300 wins might lead you to believe he’s all jock, but his degree from Yale and interest in the greater world suggest otherwise. Mike Richter recently has parlayed his reputation on the ice into a position preserving ice.
This drew in New York Times columnist David Brooks who volunteered to moderate a panel for the NHL. Brooks explained that Richter was more of an attraction than the message. (This is the whole point, by the way, more on that later.) When he opened the discussion, Brooks started by saying he was born in Toronto and had two dreams as a child: One, to play in Fenway Park and, two, to become a NHL player, a goal he summed up on the evening claming, “I was more thrilled to meet Mike Richter than I was to meet President Obama”
Hence, the role sport can play in creating and spreading the message. Mike Richter is a great hockey player (and a great guy) and this is all it takes to move a difficult message. Yet, when Mike & I began working towards a panel discussion sponsored by the NHL, nearly three months ago, we had misgivings as to whether it might actually happen: the first impediment surrounded the NHL’s winter classic, an homage to pond hockey, held in one of sport’s most hallowed venues, Fenway Park. Would the NHL be ok with a sustainable message tied to this huge event despite it’s large energy costs? The second was the NHL’s very real fear of the panel putting their least sustainable works on trial.
Professional sports isn’t a bastion of sustainable acts: Disposable gear, huge travel and earning power are the hallmarks of most sports. But those are the hallmarks of most of the western world and to tackle the subject in the wake of an outdoor game that harkens to pond hockey and pickup games is to put the issues straight away: we’re in trouble. The ice that cultivated the young moves of many of hockey’s players is being replaced by a less pleasant indoor variety. So being able to talk about sustainability with this crowd is huge.
Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council summed up this cultural divide during the panel discussion, "I think the cultural barriers to sustainability are greater than the economic factors...sports and entertainment industry leaders can help us break through that."
Hopefully this panel began just that. There are those that will write the NHL panel off as a marketing ploy, a green bone to throw to popular support for sustainability. The message can craft the action, however, and whether or not the panel is effective at starting change in sport won’t be known for a while. I’m just grateful that the work, the talk, the message has been started. To that end, Richter’s greatest save, despite the 300 career wins, might be the planet.
- AG