The Graeme Roustan Show: Dan Near

The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 hockey business annual is available at THN.com/free, featuring the annual 100 people of power and influence list.

W. Graeme Roustan, owner and publisher of The Hockey News, sat down with special guests for peer-to-peer conversations also featured in the issue, including WHL commissioner Dan Near.

Here's their full conversation in The Graeme Roustan Show:

Read along with an excerpt from their discussion:

W. GRAEME ROUSTAN: You grew up in the Toronto area, in Markham. Did you play a lot of hockey in Toronto or put the skates on back in those days?

DAN NEAR: I was never as good as I wanted to be, but I played for the Markham Winterhawks and a variety of organizations. But I was a multi-sport athlete.

WGR: Are you a little bit of an agitator today or have you sort of calmed down a little bit?

DN: Well, that’s a really interesting question. I think that most would say that I probably am. I like to shake things up. I like to ask why we do things the way that we do and explore whether it could be done differently or ought to be done differently and then challenge people to make some mistakes. I want to push things to the point where we figure out what the line is. That might be a hockey rule, a marketing idea or a game-entertainment strategy, but let’s figure out how far people are comfortable to go because we’ve got to innovate. We’ve got to follow the consumers. Our fans are looking at sports so much differently than they ever have before.

So, yeah, I’m an agitator. I’m a disruptor, but hopefully in a way that people embrace, think is positive and, most importantly, that it’s empowering. I don’t have all the ideas. I just want to push the team and the people around me to think about things and ways they haven’t done it before.

WGR: You were with the NHL for close to 10 years. What did you do at the NHL, and what was your takeaway from a business point of view?

DN: I was there at a really interesting time. I came in after the 2004-05 lockout. It happened fast and furious. I couldn’t believe that I was in New York City working at the National Hockey League. My job was to build the league’s brand out from a licensing and consumer products perspective, with U.S. retailers primarily.

WGR: Now, you’re running an organization. Back then, you were in one department, an important part in licensing, but now you’re running the WHL. What did you learn from the NHL? What did you learn from Gary Bettman and the way he ran his business?

DN: What’s interesting as you rise in your career is, when you work on a specific area of responsibility, every decision, action and outcome is really consequential. Every win, every loss, every shift matters. As you move up, each period matters, then each game matters. You know, the idea of winning percentage over time becomes a bigger priority.

WGR: You did your career stint at CCM, Adidas and then, all of a sudden, you become the commissioner of the WHL. It’s a business, but you get to interact with hockey players and owners as well as touching on every single piece of the hockey business, such as endorsements and sponsors. What was it like for you to go from doing what you did there to now running an organization as a CEO?

DN: The biggest difference would be, using the hockey business at Adidas as an example, if it screwed up, it wasn’t really going to affect the trajectory of Adidas in a substantive way. I don’t have that luxury as the commissioner or the CEO of a league. I take it as a really heavy and serious responsibility. I feel an obligation not just to the people I work for, owners and team executives, but to the fans and players. I think we’re a community-oriented league when you think about junior hockey. Our league has 22 teams across Canada and the U.S., and in a lot of those communities, we’re the most important thing that families and kids galvanize around.

WGR: What’s it been like for you to deal, converse and work with these 22 different ownership groups? What’s it been like for you to make that change, coming from a corporate environment like Adidas and the NHL to more of an entrepreneurial situation?

DN: It’s a good question. I think that these groups, these owners and governors, are all very accomplished in their own right. Even the teams that are community-owned, their president and governor, who would represent them at these meetings, these are people who have been very successful and are very influential in their community.

The fact of the matter is, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution for anything you’re working on. There’s always a perception that with any decision, some win, some lose, or, at the very least, someone wins more and someone wins less. Even ideas that are great, you’re going to run into that. You go into the meetings, interact with everyone, try to be transparent and understand what everyone’s needs are. But it’s not an environment where you’re getting a lot of “attaboys” and guys are patting you on the back after the meeting. It’s because, more often than not, you said 10 things. Seven of them they really liked, two of them they’re OK with and one of them they disagreed with. And they probably leave thinking about the one.

Part of the role of the commissioner is to find a way to deliver. We need all boats to rise, and everybody benefits differently from different solutions. But the very best thing about the WHL is the commitment from the ownership group for all boats to rise. It would be very easy to be selfish and say, “We should be treated differently. This isn’t fair,” but if we don’t have drafts and other regulations that allow teams to have some parity, it’ll be totally out of whack. We wouldn’t have a league, because there’d be six teams left with everybody wanting to play in the biggest communities. We have an ownership group that understands that and is league-first.

For this and more interviews with a deep look into the world of the hockey business, check out The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 issue, available at THN.com/free.