Greeley takes winding road
Scituate native has big role in Buffalo
A hockey life can contain its shares of zigs and zags, and Steve Greeley has had them. But anyone on the management track would be happy to be where the 37-yearold Scituate native is right now.
He was hired in June as one of two assistants general managers (the other being Randy Sexton) under new Buffalo GM Jason Botterill. Together they’ll attempt to get the Sabres, who possess several solid pieces already, to somehow turn the corner.
The Thayer and Boston University product reached this point at a relatively young age thanks to a little chutzpah, good fortune, solid work ethic and a willingness to make his own path.
He finished up his playing days in the 2004-05 season, which he spent in the East Coast Hockey League. He was working in finance when he decided he’d like to extend his hockey career. He sent a letter to a bunch of American GMs including Mike O’Connell, the former Bruins boss who hooked on with the Los Angeles Kings in the player development department in 2006. Greeley as a kid caddied for O’Connell at Black Rock Country Club in Hingham.
“Three months after I wrote the letter, OC invited me over his house for a cup of coffee, and two days later I was on a plane to LA with a new job. Funny how it works,” Greeley said.
In Los Angeles, Greeley started out scouting college free agents and moved up to pro scout. He was part of the management group that built two Stanley Cup winners, then he took a detour back to the college game, serving as one of David Quinn’s associate coaches for two years at his alma mater. Greeley and the Terriers fell one win shy of a national championship with a local kid who now is the Sabres’ star forward, Jack Eichel.
From there, he went to work for another Massachusetts guy, Rangers GM Jeff Gorton (a Melrose native and O’Connell’s former assistant in Boston) as the assistant director of player personnel for New York before getting the call from Buffalo.
“I’ve been lucky,” said Greeley, whose Sabres make their first Garden appearance of the season Saturday. “I did get a job pretty quickly with LA through Mike O’Connell, and I’d say the biggest thing for me was that I certainly started at the bottom and made some sacrifices along the way and worked hard.
“And I was lucky enough to work with some people that I think are brilliant hockey minds and have great work ethics like Mike O’Connell, (current Philadelphia GM) Ron Hextall, Dean Lombardi, David Quinn when I went to BU and Jeff Gorton. One of the best things that’s happened to me is that I’ve been able to surround myself with high-character people who know how to work hard and treated me well the whole time. When I just started in LA and just scratching the surface, I was always treated like an equal. I’ve been lucky with the people I’ve worked with, that’s for sure.”
The move to the bench at BU was unusual at the time, but it was an important step.
“It was certainly a different route,” Greeley said. “I thought what it would do for me was expose me to another side of the game in coaching. Inevitably, I did a lot of the recruiting. With that, you find out a little bit more about the game, you see it a little bit differently from the bench. I know that was one of the things that definitely helped me get the job with the Rangers and Buffalo, that they were intrigued that I had a little bit of a coaching background now, too. So I experienced the game at a few different levels.
“When I went to BU, I was open-minded in thinking that I could be at BU for 10 years. We lost in a national championship that second year, and some of the kids that you recruited are still on the way, so you get pretty attached to the program. But I did hope to get to where I am now, and when Jeff Gorton called me, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. With the role that was presented to me, it was such a great situation, just as BU was. That’s why it’s so hard to plan in this business. Some things happen, good or bad. But I took that job, hoping it would help me individually and help BU win a national title and see where it took me. It certainly paid off.”
Greeley is just one of several young local guys who are making their way in NHL management circles, a group that includes Blues assistant GM Kevin McDonald (Lawrence), Predators chief amateur scout Jeff Kealty (Framingham), Blackhawks chief U.S. scout Mike Doneghy (West Roxbury) and the Bruins’ own associate director of amateur scouting Ryan Nadeau (Taunton), as well as former longtime NHLers Tom Fitzgerald (assistant GM in New Jersey from Billerica) and Bill Guerin (assistant GM in Pittsburgh from Wilbraham).
And as a perk of his birthplace, Greeley will not have to move his family from their home in Milton, though there will be the usual grueling travel.
“Boston is such a great hockey town with the NHL, AHL and college. I can do so much staying right here that I do get a lot of nights at home because there’s so much great hockey around here,” said Greeley, who has prospects to watch at Boston College (Casey Fitzgerald and Christopher Brown) and Providence College (Jacob Bryson).
The next logical step for Greeley usually is the hardest to take. And Greeley’s making no assumptions about it.
“You never plan, and you never know how it’s going to go,” he said. “I think anyone that’s working in hockey as an assistant or scout or whatever, that GM chair is the ultimate dream with the Stanley Cup. But for me, I’m taking the approach that you work as hard as you can for the team you’re with, and then you just see what happens. I’ve certainly been lucky so far.”