John Sedgwick likes to say that, apart from a title on his business cards, his appointment as assistant general manager at the Montreal Canadiens will not change much in his daily life.
Updated yesterday at 6:02 p.m.
And the pay? asked a reporter. “We’ll see,” he replied, laughing.
In reality, the one who has been the organization’s vice-president of hockey operations and legal affairs since 2017 becomes a real “hockey man” – the term and the quotation marks are his.
A clarification is needed here on the extraordinary organization chart of the Canadian. With the arrival of Jeff Gorton as executive vice-president of hockey operations (the epithet “executive” is key here), Sedgwick found himself in a kind of hierarchical non-place.
He was also one of the last members of the previous administration to remain in office, after former chief executive Marc Bergevin and his deputy Trevor Timmins were fired, and Scott Mellanby, another deputy, was fired. resigned.
Following these upheavals, this expert in the management of the salary cap and the collective agreement was quickly informed that he had nothing to fear for his job security. Now, after a few weeks of seeing him on a daily basis, new general manager Kent Hughes has decided to officially make him his right-hand man. With that in mind, yes, a VP gets a promotion by becoming an assistant CEO.
Back to Sedgwick. In a press briefing, the pride was palpable in this trained lawyer. After 16 years in hockey, first with the NHL and then, since 2013, with the Canadiens, he now joins the close guard of the general manager, and will be directly involved in decisions concerning training and development, beyond figures and contracts.
“It means a lot to me,” he said. I have always enjoyed working here. Growing up in Toronto, I was rooting for another team, but my dad, from Kingston, was a huge Canadiens fan. So becoming deputy general manager of this team is an honor, a privilege. »
Bilingual
This promotion comes for him after he first got an interview for the position of general manager, which was eventually awarded to Hughes.
The knowledgeable supporter will note here that senior management was only supposed to meet with bilingual candidates. Sedgwick fulfilled this criterion perfectly: despite the understandable nervousness of a person who is not used to speaking in public, he answered in French all the questions addressed to him in that language during the briefing. Press.
He explained in particular that he learned French in immersion classes in elementary school, but saw his mastery of the language wither in high school. However, since his arrival in Montreal, he has been taking French lessons. “It’s important for me to improve. »
His parents, he added, always wanted him to be able to express himself in French, even in an environment like Toronto. “My father became a judge in the 1960s without speaking French, and in 1975 he heard cases in French. »
To learn
In terms of hockey, we did not learn much from this meeting with the media, which was mainly aimed, we understand, to introduce the manager to the public, after years spent working behind the scenes.
He would not say no to a general manager position in the NHL, but he prefers to bet on a “long and successful career in hockey” rather than reaching a specific position.
He believes he will learn “a lot” with Gorton and Hughes, as he did with Bergevin, Timmins, Mellanby.
His new bosses bring a “different perspective”, one through his past experience in other teams, the other through his career as a players’ agent.
I see this as a great opportunity to grow, to learn, to find new ways of doing things as a hockey manager.
John Sedgwick
Among the major projects that will occupy him in the short term, the creation of the team’s analytics department is certainly at the top of the list. In his view, it was “important” that the organization invest in “finding objective ways to measure the talent [afin de] develop players.
Asked to comment on the desire expressed by Kent Hughes to set up a “modern” organization, Sedgwick was cautious.
“I don’t think we had a bad process [auparavant], but there are always things to improve. »
On the seventh floor of the Bell Center as on the ice, he could have added.