A conversation with Shawn Thornton: On his book, cold-calling GMs, and a ‘floating bar’ with Tuukka Rask (2024)

Shawn Thornton knows why he wrote a book. Podcast appearances, baby!

“The only reason I wrote it was to get on this show,” Thornton told “The Athletic Hockey Show.” “I didn’t think I could get on any other way.”

It actually took a couple years of convincing by co-author Dale Arnold to get Thornton — a 14-year NHL enforcer and two-time Stanley Cup champion — to work on “Fighting My Way To The Top.”

The end product was worth it, especially if you care about the Boston Bruins or are interested in anecdotes from a hockey lifer. Thornton, now 42 and the chief commercial officer for the Florida Panthers, stopped by the show for a chat, and it was great.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts,Spotifyor whichever podcast platform you prefer.

He and Tuukka Rask shared a boat

Craig: I love that the interludes from teammates or your wife who — I don’t know her, but she seems really funny. It would be like, “Let’s talk about the boat.” And she’s like, “Aw, not again with the boat.” These great little breaks, I don’t know who came up with that idea, but it was awesome.

Shawn: Me, because I couldn’t talk about myself that much! I need other voices on here. I can’t have myself talking about a fight with Georges Laraque. I’d rather have somebody that was there and experienced what I was going through give a little behind the scenes,

My wife, it’s funny, we were over at David Ortiz’s golf tournament like a week and a half ago, and a few people met her for the first time. And they’re like, “Your wife is you. She’s a carbon copy. She is the female version of you. She swears as much as you do. She tells you exactly how it is.” Yeah, I married my carbon copy. And that boat, I’ve never seen her so angry my life, as she was when she found out about that boat. So it wasn’t the best purchase.

Craig: That’s a good test of a relationship with a friend. Can you share a boat? That should be the litmus test. You and Tuukka have survived the boat purchase. Because I think that might end a few of my friendships.

Shawn: Yeah. It wasn’t used that much. That’s probably why. It was a floating bar, basically.

Sean: I loved all the Tuukka stuff. He wrote the foreword, and you had the separate chapter about him. I had known you guys were tight. But I don’t think I quite realized it was that it was on that level.

Shawn: He’s like me in the fact that he doesn’t like to be the center of attention. He likes to just fly behind the scenes, do his job, have a beer at home. He doesn’t really leave a mile radius of his house too often. I’m the same way. It was a favorite ask him to do it. But he’s such a good guy that he said, “Yeah, not a problem, whatever you need.”

Fighting Matt Cooke took a lot of planning

Craig: I don’t think I understood some of the intricacies that go into the role that you played. We don’t have to go story-by-story and give all the highlights away.

Shawn: Yeah, I want people to buy this still. Come on.

Craig: So I’ll be careful here, but — we’re talking about the Matt Cooke retribution (a few days after Cooke injured Bruins center Marc Savard in 2010 and ended his career). The level of communication that went on behind the scenes with Billy Guerin, or Mark Recchi, just to arrange it, and then (ask), “Are we good?” I think I knew there was a little bit of that. You knew you were gonna have to do it. But there was a lot of communication that went on there.

Shawn: Yeah, there’s a full plan in place. From start to finish. I’d been through it a few times in the minors. (Recchi) had seen in this day. We’ve seen games go completely to the left, and where you don’t want it to go. That’s probably more my comfort zone, to be completely honest, and our team was built for that at the time. Now (the Penguins) had a pretty tough team. Don’t get me wrong. They had some big boys on the team. But if you really went down the list, man to man, our bottom third is gonna be standing a lot higher. And we just didn’t want to turn it into that. So yeah, there’s some logistics that went into it. And I thought it was the right way to handle the situation. And it turned out to be the end of the day.

Sean: In the book, you’re like, “Alright, like Bergeron can go out and play and Crosby can go out and play.” There’s some kind of give and take where you’re like, “Yeah, our big guns can go out and work and so can theirs.”

Shawn: Nobody really wants to get into those situations where every single shift is a five-on-five brawl until there’s four guys left on the bench and you’re on ESPN and Sportsnet for all the wrong reasons. Instead of (Bergeron) getting a hat trick that game after things were taken care of, and we had a 4-1 win or whatever. We were cognizant of that and we just wanted to handle it properly.

Craig: It’s funny that even to read how conscious you were of, like, “This is going to be what brings attention to our sport. I was at ESPN at that time. And I felt like the only time I was ever doing SportsCenter or something, it wasn’t because Sid had a hat trick. It was because there was a fight. Even I was like “OK, really? This is what’s gonna get me 10 seconds of airtime?”

Shawn: That shows you how much I don’t like being in front center of attention because I definitely could’ve been the center of attention that night.

Sean: You could have been leading PTI for days if you wanted to.

Shawn: I think I was once, unfortunately. I’m guessing (the suspension for attacking Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik in December 2013 after Orpik concussed Loui Eriksson). For all the wrong reasons!

Sean: We’re gonna continue spoiling sections from the book. We’re gonna read the Orpik section word-for-word here so people don’t actually have to buy it.

He appreciates Gary Bettman

Craig: Gary Bettman did seem to go out of his way — and I mean, Gary Bettman is not a popular guy right now — but you did seem to appreciate the level of communication he gave you and the respect he gave you (during Thornton’s appeal of the 15-game suspension for the Orpik incident).

Shawn: One-hundred percent. The professionalism from Gary during that whole process was great. And I understood the severity of what was going on behind the scenes with everything, too. I understood who I was and was self-aware on what type of player I was.

The first hearing did not go the way I wanted to. He wasn’t there. It did not go the way I wanted it to. I did not feel good coming out of it. I did not feel good about how it was leaked. It did not feel good that I found out about it hours after it was leaked. It didn’t feel right. But the second hearing couldn’t have been more professional. I talked about it in the book, but he called me on Christmas Eve and let me know that they were holding up the 15 games, and it wasn’t personal, and walked me through some of the reasons. I was just grabbing a coffee after taking the kids to a movie. And I was like, “You know what, he didn’t have to take the time out of his day on Christmas Eve to give me a shout. I’m just one person. He’s working with owners and investors and billionaires. Like, who am I?” But I thought that was very professional and it did not go unnoticed.

He cold-called GMs for his second NHL job

Craig: You had no agent starting out. So here you are, calling every GM at the start of your career.

Shawn: So I had an agent when I got drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Rick Heinz, he got out of the agency business. He ran goalie schools in Toronto and stuff. When I wasn’t qualified by Toronto, I had to quickly figure out what a CBA was, and then where my standing was in it.

So I didn’t have time, nor could I find the right agent, being a three-year minor league player. They weren’t knocking on my door, saying, “This guy’s the next greatest thing to come walking up.” So I just figured out on my own. I started calling every team. I called the (NHLPA). And I was under the assumption that I was a free agent. And luckily (Mike Smith), my coach in my first three years was the assistant coach of the Chicago Blackhawks. But it was actually through Al MacIsaac — which I know there’s stories that just went out with him — but back in the time, Al MacIsaac was a GM (with Chicago’s AHL affiliate in) Norfolk. That’s who I got in touch with. And then he called up Mike Smith and said, “We’d like to bring him to camp. We’d like to sign up for the AHL team. Mike Smith knew who I was from Toronto and said, “We’d love to have him.” So that’s how I ended up in camp there. But then yeah, it looked like I didn’t have the right to be a free agent. Toronto still technically owned my rights. So I did not figure out the CBA properly as a 22-year-old (and was traded instead).

Sean: It was like, one line in the book: “Yeah, I called every GM.” How do you even get all the cells? “Hey, Brian Burke …”

Shawn: Oh, I called offices back then. I don’t even know if people had phones. The PHPA and the NHLPA literally sent the list. They said, “Here’s a list of all the GMs and AGMs in the AHL and the NHL, and I just got on the phone, every week for a couple hours and tried to get in touch with them. It’s actually remarkable like as a player, you find out really quickly who you might want to play for one day. I think it was the GM in Philly at the time called, like, “Man, I know who you are, but I got no f*ckin’ place for you in our minor organization, but appreciate you giving me the phone call. I was like, “You know what, thanks.”

And then there’s some that kick you off to like the minor-league scout doesn’t have any say and is like, “Yeah, I’d love to have the conversation with you,” and it ends up going nowhere. It was a unique experience. I wouldn’t want to do it again. But it was a unique experience.

Sean: You get the joy of cold-calling people.

Shawn: Yeah, it was my first sales job.

Sean: Yeah, it’s a big part of this f*ckin’ job, too. “I’m calling someone who I know doesn’t want to talk to me whatsoever, and I’m gonna do it a dozen more times.”

Shawn: Gotta do what you gotta do. It ended up working out.

He had a 15-year rivalry with Michel Therrien, dating back to the OHL

Sean: Have you heard back from (longtime coach) Michel Therrien yet? That was one of my favorite sections.

Shawn: He was (in Florida) on Wednesday. I didn’t go down there. We played Philly Wednesday. No, I haven’t heard from him. I have no problem whatever. If he reaches out or not, we’re both men. I have no problem having a conversation with them.

Craig: Isn’t he in the title of one of the chapters?

Shawn: It was that big of a rivalry! Between a player and a coach, that’s unheard of.

Craig: Have have we heard about coaches versus player rivalries?

Sean: Imagine a coach who had a years-long rivalry with a player, and not just any player. I’d have been like, “Yep, Therrien sounds right.”

Shawn: Yeah, it was like a 14-, 15-year thing. That’s why I had to get Trent Yawney and a couple others to speak to it, too. I didn’t want anyone to think it was all in my head. I needed other people to say, “No, no, it’s true. Every game that guy sent somebody or did something.”

He named “The Merlot Line”

Craig: I don’t even know if we have that anymore, where you have a great name, a great line. It’s just one of the awesome things that come out of championship teams. I don’t think you guys viewed yourself as a fourth line either (during the Bruins’ 2011 Cup run). When you were on the ice, that was an impact line. Why was it so special?

Shawn: Obviously, you look at the depth chart, we’re the fourth line, but we had a pretty team. That’s why we won. But internally, we consider ourselves more of a checking line. We took pride in the fact that we could play against most top lines on any given night in good minutes. Now were we lighting the lamp against Sid’s line? Probably not. But we could eat up some minutes. One, the name was good. (Claude Julien) called us the burgundy line. I was like, “Nah, we’re not a French wine. We’re gonna be Merlot if anything.”

We wore those jerseys every single day in practice, the same color. And we were a line together for, what three and a half years? So, the combination of those things — the longevity, the unique jersey color and the fact that I love wine probably all go together. And I played with two guys that were second- and third-liners on every other team that they played on, right? They come to us and they accept a fourth-line role and made my life a lot easier.

Sean: You said that about (Daniel Paille and Gregory Campbell).

Shawn: (Paille) was a second-liner our team until (Brad Marchand) took off, and then they had nowhere else to put him. So he was stuck playing with me and Soup. But (Paille) was playing on the second line with Bergy when we traded for him.

For more from Thornton — including a great Phil Kessel story — listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts,Spotifyor whichever podcast platform you prefer.

(Top photo: Eliot J. Schechter / NHLI via Getty Images)