UB Law Alum Gerry Meehan Elected to Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame

So this is a post 35 plus years in the making. It is a distinct honor and privilege to write this profile of UB Law alum and Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame inductee Class of 2023 Gerry Meehan, my mentor and my esteemed friend.

Gerry is the consummate role model in this era in which so many gifted athletes struggle to find the right fit for their post-play careers. Long before player unions provided educational benefits, or the NCAA mandated support to complete degrees, Gerry pioneered a path to success beyond his NHL career. This is his story – and a clarion call to those who follow him to find their next, best fit.

Drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1963, Gerry’s rights were already owned by the Leafs due to an underage contract, signed when he was only 16. Gerry had an academic scholarship to St. Michael’s College, a private school in the University of Toronto system. Gerry recalls his time at St. Michael’s as “very demanding”. While it was not normal at the time for students with strong academic credentials to also play major junior hockey, Gerry’s focus – and that of his family – was always upon attending college. Gerry’s father was a white collar worker, while his mother was an RN. He was the first of an extended family to attend university, and he did so while playing in the Ontario Hockey League – no small feat.

Upon graduating from St. Michael’s, Gerry entered the University of Toronto. He notes that most OHL players could not attend college because there were typically no four year schools nearby. He was fortunate that his family had always supported his college ambitions and that Jim Gregory, a longtime NHL official and then-GM of the Toronto Marlies, also organized team activities to accommodate college schedules. Consequently, practices were in the afternoon, while games were typically on weekends, and travel was generally restricted to the Greater Toronto Metropolitan Area. This is in contrast to the demands upon today’s OHL players, whose travel obligations are significantly greater, and who receive one year of college tuition for each year of service in the league.

Gerry completed two years at the University of Toronto, majoring in political science and economics. His collegiate career ended at age 20, when he signed a pro contract following his first training camp with the Maple Leafs in 1967-1968. This decision prevented him from opting into a program that would have allowed him to enter law school early due to his high GPA. Already, the tension between his professional career paths in sports and law was driving decisions.

At that time, the Leafs had a minor team in Rochester for call-ups and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma for developmental players like Gerry, so off he went to Tulsa in the Central League (along with good friend and future teammate, Don Luce, who ended up in Omaha.) During this period, no educational opportunities were available. During the offseason, Gerry worked at hockey schools and was a management trainee at Shoppers Drug Mart back home.

Eventually, Gerry became a rostered player on the Leafs, playing in 25-30 games. The Leafs traded him to Philadelphia at age 22, and one year later Gerry was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in the NHL expansion draft. Gerry and his wife, Mirella, found a home in Buffalo. He played four seasons with the Sabres, serving as captain, and then had a transformative year in which he was traded three times. At this juncture, the family decided to retain its home base in Buffalo while Gerry ultimately ended up with the Washington Capitals for three years. During that time, Gerry completed his undergraduate degree at Canisius College, taking two or three courses each offseason. Meanwhile, he worked at hockey clinics, notably co-founding the Sabres Hockey School with Frank Downing in the mid-1970s.

In a happy coincidence, Gerry’s wife, Mirella, sat next to Buffalo attorney and Canisius alum Tony Colucci at Sabres games during Gerry’s tenure in Buffalo. As Gerry’s NHL career was winding down, Tony recommended that Gerry take the LSAT – something Gerry had never heard of before. He scored well, and submitted a late application to UB Law School in 1979. Alan Carrel, longtime UB Law administrator, notified Gerry that he was waitlisted due to the late submission of his application, and ultimately notified Gerry that he had been admitted to the Class of 1982.

Gerry’s career at UB Law began as a member of the “experimental” Section 3, which featured ConTorts – a combination of Contract and Tort Law. That section notably included a number of people with prior work experience who viewed the JD as an additional professional opportunity. Gerry recalls that the members of that section were extraordinarily successful, with careers ranging from journalism (Lee Coppolla, investigative reporter) to the head of the Maryland probation department (Scott Oakley) and New York city banking counsel (Frank Scifo).

During that first year, Gerry was taught contracts by Prof. Fred Konefsky.  Prof. Konefsky remembers Gerry as one of several students recruited to the class who were more mature, serious, and whose perspective “really added to the mix”.  Prof. Konefsky recalls that Gerry was especially engaged in discussions on negotiation strategy.  Gerry’s real world experience was particularly beneficial to the younger students in the class.  Prof. Konefsky specifically noted Gerry’s loyalty to UB Law, seeing him at numerous Alumni Dinners over the years, and remembering especially his generous response when Prof. Konefsky and Prof. Dianne Avery referred yours truly to Gerry as a 2L because of my interest in sports law.  (I ended up participating in a independent study researching alternative dispute resolution in the NHL under Professors Konefsky and Avery, with Gerry as my advisor – a seminal moment that opened the door to my future career in the sports industry.) 

Gerry took the typical mainstream law courses, with no specific intent of entering into the realm of sports law. As Gerry neared graduation, however, with stellar grades and multiple job offers, he elected to join the firm of Cohen, Swados, Wright, Hanifin, Bradford & Brett, which served as outside counsel to both the NHL and the Buffalo Sabres.

Gerry’s natural connection to the Sabres and the NHL served him well in his new position. At that time, the Sabres front office was relatively small, and then-GM Scotty Bowman had minimal administrative support. Consequently, Gerry was tasked with a number of matters, including developing the wish list for what is now Key Bank Center – in 1984, a decade before the facility was to be built. Around that time, Gerry joined the Sabres as Assistant GM and corporate Secretary, eventually also assuming a hockey operations role. Meanwhile, between 1982-1984 Gerry served as an analyst and intermission host for Sabres games broadcast on the nascent Empire Sports Network.

By the fall of 1986, the Sabres front office included a dream team of young, capable former NHL players turned executives: Gerry, Don Luce and Craig Ramsay. Each of these former Sabres greats brought tremendous hockey insight and a wealth of knowledge. Around the same time, the Sabres hired Ken Bass, a young computer whiz who was tasked with managing all of the organization’s data. Gerry and Don realized that Ken’s talents could be utilized to transform roster management. Up until this time, general managers and their staffs relied upon paper binders stuffed with information on various players. Now, the hockey gurus recognized that player data such as physical attributes, statistics and even a very basic 1-5 rating scale could be converted into computer files that would generate printouts.  This approach would be first used to develop rankings for players in the amateur draft.  Ultimately, this tool was used to develop player assessments comparing the team’s reserve list to that of each team in the same division, the conference and the entire NHL.  While the algorithms did not yet exist to sort and analyze the data, the hockey guys relied upon their own judgment to make discretionary decisions.

Meanwhile, the NHL was separately attempting to computerize player data information. As was often the case in this pre-internet era, the data was unreliable and frequently was unavailable. Consequently, it was considered a backup tool – for consultation, but subject to verification.

Of note, it was shortly after this system was constructed that Gerry and Don collaborated in one of the most historic player draft selections of all time: the 1988 selection of Alexander Mogilny as the 89th pick in the fifth round of the NHL Entry Draft. Gerry recalls asking Rudy Migay, “Who is the best player in the world not on our list?”, well knowing what the answer would be. Sabres scouts, including Don and Rudy, had seen Mogilny perform internationally at a very high level, including the World Junior tournament the previous year.

Gerry was well aware of the international political arena in which the USSR was quickly devolving. The Russian Ice Hockey Federation was financially unstable as the USSR became increasingly unstable. Essentially, only the two or three teams affiliated with the Soviet military (including Alexander’s) and state owned utilities had any money. Meanwhile, in the absence of any Soviet commercial code or business code of ethics, all transactions – including those for players – had become a simple question of who had the money. Gerry was reasonably confident that he would be able to negotiate for Alexander’s services within the next three to four years, and Alex was only 19 at the time of his selection. Gerry was able to convince team ownership – the Knox brothers and Bob Swados – that the draft choice made sense, never anticipating that Alex himself would force the issue by defecting just one year later. Clearly, however, the analytical tool developed by the hockey dream team, augmented by their hockey judgment, produced essentially the best fifth round pick in NHL draft history.

In May, 1989, Gerry received a call that changed Sabres history. Alex Mogilny was playing in the World Championships in Stockholm, and he was interested in defecting to the United States. Don Luce and Gerry flew to Stockholm, met with Alex and his representatives, and eluded the KGB for several days while securing Alex’s safe passage to the U.S. Alex eventually was granted asylum status, and adopted the year of his defection, 89, as his uniform number. Two years later, Gerry obtained Pat LaFontaine in a trade from the New York Islanders, creating one of the, if not THE, most dynamic scoring duos in NHL history. With LaFontaine as his center, Mogilny scored an incredible 76 goals and 127 points in 77 games in 1992-1993. LaFontaine totalled 53 goals and 95 assists – the highest point total ever for an American born player. It was during this epic time that Gerry traded for Dominik Hasek with the Chicago Black Hawks in return for Stephane Beauregard. Hasek developed into one of the greatest goalies of all time, earning the Vezina (twice), the Lester B. Pearson Award, and the Hart Trophy. The roster developed by Meehan, Luce and Ramsay became the basis for an exciting and highly competitive NHL team for the rest of that decade.

Gerry left the Sabres to found Cardinal Consulting in 1997, using his analytical skills and developing tools to create a framework for NHLteam valuations. This platform was utilized in multiple franchise transactions. He also co-foundedPointstreak, a sports information management algorithm that allowed the sharing of information on a league wide basis. To that end, Gerry served as consultant, and then Chairman of the Board and inhouse counsel, facilitating financing to assist in the establishment of Pointstreak as a resource for many amateur leagues in Canada, and, eventually, as a tool for NHL Central Scouting. Pointstreak was ultimately acquired by several entities and still operates in various form in multiple sports.

Simultaneously, Gerry became involved in the development of a player electronic medical records system. This program is a general manager’s tool that organizes a club’s player assets with input from all relevant sources such as athletic trainers, medical records from physicians, etc. It has since been adopted by both the NHL and MLB.

More recently, Gerry became involved with handling insurance matters for retired players. Prior to the adoption of Obamacare, many players with existing preconditions had difficulty obtaining private medical insurance in the U.S. Following the resolution of this issue with Obamacare, Gerry worked with the Professional Hockey Players Association in assisting Canadian athletes with Social Security and Medicare concerns. As Special Counsel to Mattice Legal LLC, https://matticelegal.com/.   He serves asofficial U.S. benefits counsel to the PHPA.

In addition to his work with the PHPA, Gerry continues to pursue his passion for assisting current and former elite athletes in transitioning into post-playing careers. As Associate Director of Sports Analytics for the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, he works with a dedicated team including Dr. E. Bruce Pitman, Assistant Dean Lisa Stephens, Amy Moore, Jim Michalowski, Kayleigh Peri and the author in developing and delivering a series of four online courses designed to introduce current and former athletes to industry opportunities in “life after sports”. Gerry notes that he is especially excited about this program because it has been designed to facilitate engagement with those who have challenges with in-person, semester based learning. The asynchronous, online courses can be accessed remotely, on demand, making them especially attractive for elite athletes who have other work and family obligations. https://engineering.buffalo.edu/home/academics/beyond/micro-creds.host.html/content/shared/engineering/school-wide-content/micro-credentials/sports-law.detail.html Of note, serious discussions are underway concerning the potential for a Masters degree in Analytics, Sports Law & Team Operations, depending upon the level of enthusiasm demonstrated for the existing courses.

Gerry emphasizes how important it is to find the right path forward when transitioning from a playing career. He notes that the real world is very different: “You come out of your career . . . having lived in a very narcissistic world. It is a protective culture where you don’t have to do much but play the game. And then you are told it’s over. . . . I was lucky because I had two anchors: my studies and my family. The Law School provided me with a new goal, a new concentration that was very structured, and I liked it.” He encourages other athletes who are transitioning to find their right fit.

On his well-deserved election to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame, Gerry states: “It’s an honor to be included in this community of inductees in the sports community of Western New York and Buffalo.”

The Center for the Advancement of Sport, the Law School, the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences and the UB community as a whole heartily congratulate Gerry on this singular honor. We appreciate his continuing dedication to UB and to the wellbeing of other athletes.

Image of Meehan Skating:  Ice Hockey Wiki