Friends, family, and a mentor pay tribute to Chris Snow
CALGARY, Alberta — The friends and family of Chris Snow, including wife Kelsie, daughter Willa, and son Cohen, paid touching tribute to him Thursday, gathering here inside St. Michael Catholic Community Church for a near two-hour memorial service fittingly rich in storytelling, a craft he both admired and mastered.
On a gray, chilly afternoon, those in attendance talked a lot about Snow’s perpetual smile, as wide as the Banff mountain range, and the lasting signature of his unremitting optimism.
They talked a lot about his love of family, his passion for numbers, and they talked about how a Melrose kid who went to Malden Catholic once worked on the concessions crew at Fenway Park, studied journalism at Syracuse, and covered the Red Sox for the Globe, only to surrender it at age 25 to pursue a career in an NHL front office.
“It was evident right away that he was different,” said Brad Treliving, the ex-Flames general manager who was Snow’s boss for nearly a decade. “Smart guy . . . genuine . . . caring . . . he genuinely cared about other people.”
Snow, 42, died Sept. 30 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the cruel, devastating neurodegenerative disease. Over the last 15-plus years of his working life, including the four-plus years he battled ALS, he crafted a groundbreaking career around analytics, first with the Minnesota Wild and then with the Flames.
Snow became a master of his domain, applying numbers and logic to hockey, a sport founded on the whimsical, oft-capricious bounces of a six-ounce chunk of vulcanized rubber. Somehow, he made sense of all that, and the Boston in him, noted his former boss, assuredly factored into it.
“We called it the Boston
brashness,” said Treliving, recently hired as GM of the Maple Leafs. “It’s a great mix of stubborn with just a dash of sarcasm. He could make grown people — civilized, calm, and rational people — go crazy at certain times.”
Snow and Craig Conroy, who recently succeeded Treliving as Flames GM, were “like brothers,” noted their former boss. That fraternal love sometimes led them to knock heads when sharing their scouting assessments.
“It would usually end with Craig going, ‘You know what, Chris,’ ” recalled Treliving. “‘That’s great what your numbers say, but you didn’t play the game and you just don’t know!’ ”
Not a criticism new to Snow’s ears, or most sportswriters’. From Day 1, sports reporters are routinely ridiculed by athletes and fans alike for not having more than, say, rudimentary playing experience. But Conroy’s critique landed on Snow’s shoulders like mere ice shavings on a warm summer’s day.
“Chris looked at Craig,” recalled Treliving, “and said, ‘The problem is, Craig, you played the game and you still don’t know!’ ”
Treliving’s recollection brought me back to similar conversations I had with Snow over the last 20 years, dating back to his days as a student at Syracuse, where he wrote sports for the Daily Orange. We were introduced at an NCAA regional hockey tournament in Albany by Ed Carpenter, the beloved (and now retired) director of sports information at my alma mater, Boston University.
The gregarious Carpenter was pals with Chris’s father, Bob Snow, a public school administrator in Massachusetts by day, a freelance hockey writer by nights . . . and weekends . . . and holidays.
A short time after Carpenter introduced us, Snow was my guest at the Globe for a tour at the sprawling Morrissey Boulevard plant. The visit included a stop in the lunch room (vital!), a visit to the whirring presses (with robots toting massive rolls of newsprint), and the sports department. I introduced him that day to sports editor Don Skwar and his first lieutenant, Joe Sullivan.
Soon after, Sullivan hired Snow to be a summer intern and assigned me to be his writing mentor for those 1012 weeks. Despite that handicap, he thrived, and after graduation he landed a full-time writing job as a Minnesota Wild beat man. By age 23, he was back in Boston, hired again by Sullivan for the coveted Red Sox beat.
“Young, sure, but he could handle it,” Sullivan recalled. “Just a unique kid, evident from the time he joined us an intern. Always so prepared.
“First week, we send him to a minor golf tournament, something we have every intern cover. Midday, he calls in and says, ‘OK, I can write this, or I can write this, or I can write this . . . which one would you like?’ Three stories, take your pick.”
An analytical mind
By age 25, barely a couple of years into the Sox beat, Snow abruptly changed course and decided to leave journalism.
“Uh, you sure, Chris?” I said. “Guys kill for that Sox beat. You won’t find a better place, better bosses, better audience. You’re great at it. Once you leave, it’s tough to come back.”
All true, said an appreciative Snow, but he didn’t like where print journalism was headed. He also preferred hockey, and in his short time covering the Wild, he had struck up a strong, respectful relationship with Doug Risebrough, the ex-Canadiens winger who was the Wild GM.
Risebrough, now 69 and retired, was here for the service, driving up from his home in California. In Snow’s days as a Wild beat writer, Risebrough encouraged him one day to consider working for a team. If ever interested, he said, he wanted Snow to call him.
“So the phone rings one day and Chris says, ‘So, Riser, you got a job for me?’ ” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, no. I thought this was going to be maybe 15-17 years down the road or something.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, well, journalism’s changing . . . ’ ”
Quickly, Risebrough created a spot for Snow. As GM, he was always looking for people with new ideas and new approaches. Snow had that and more.
“From a personal standpoint, you always want positive people around you,” Risebrough said. “Because as a [GM], everyone’s dumping on you all the time. Chris was always upbeat. Personality. Intelligence. Positivity. I said, ‘OK, I gotta figure out a way.’ ”
Snow entered the Wild front office (“coming over from the dark side,” kidded Treliving) in a vaguely defined hockey operations role. It gave him the foothold to begin developing a separate, robust wing of applied analytics. All of it was going well until a change in Wild ownership left both Risebrough and Snow, among others, without a job.
Nearly a year out of work, Snow wrote to every other GM in the NHL in hopes of landing a job. He would be in Florida for their annual GM meetings, he wrote, and asked each one if they could hear his job pitch. Only two said OK: Jay Feaster in Calgary and Brian Burke in Toronto.
It was Feaster who hired him and brought him here. Burke, who that day told Snow, “You’ve got 30 minutes to convince me you’re not wasting my time,” years later came here in an executive role and ended up being Snow’s boss.
“It was that meeting in Florida when he got on the radar with me,” Burke recalled. “It was so obvious. Bright. And articulate. Analytics was all pretty new then, revolutionary. We were all afraid of it. Chris believed it could turn into something that would help us win games.”
In his years as Snow’s boss, noted Burke, the analytics team grew not only in number but in overall decision-making stature. Snow was assigned layers of responsibility, including input on player development duties and contract negotiations. His numbers went from a curiosity to vital information.
“Let’s say we were going to trade Player X for Player Y,” said Burke. “If Snowy said no, that was it, no deal. That was how much authority and influence he built. And a good guy — no, a great guy.”
Giving new life
Chris and Kelsie (also once a Globe sports intern) were tireless advocates for ALS research the last four years, dating to his 2019 diagnosis. At last count, they had raised nearly $600,000 toward the fight to eradicate the disease.
Chris suffered from a rare subset of ALS, a genetic mutation that led to the deaths of his father in 2018, two uncles, and a cousin. They ranged in age from 28 to 68 and all died soon after diagnosis.
In hopes of slowing the disease’s progression, Snow joined a clinical study within weeks of his diagnosis. For more than three years, he and Kelsie made monthly trips to Toronto, where clinicians injected him with an experimental drug. He survived some three years beyond the initial prognosis.
In the end, cardiac arrest and a subsequent brain injury led to life support. Doctors ultimately harvested Snow’s lungs, kidneys, and liver, “giving four people the gift of life,” wrote Kelsie.
“My father was the strongest, bravest, and most loved man you could ever imagine,” 9-year-old Willa read aloud as Thursday’s ceremony neared its close. “I’m so very heartbroken, I cannot even put it into words.”
Her father’s battle with ALS “is all over,” added Willa, “all his pain is gone. Now bright colors fill his future.”