Tag: John Soutsos
Building Winning Teams with Craig Custance – Part 2 (Ep. 37)

Building Winning Teams with Craig Custance – Part 2 (Ep. 37)

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Is the NHL’s expansion strategy fueling league success, or is it a shot in the dark?

In this episode, John and Alex Soutsos are joined again by Craig Custance for part two of their engaging discussion on his book, “The Franchise: The Business of Building Winning Teams.” They dive into pressing topics like the NHL’s history with salary caps and expansion teams, including the intricacies behind markets like Atlanta and what it takes to build a successful sports organization. Tune in to hear about the surprising decisions by team managers, the importance of ownership commitment, and the transformative role of market presence in sports success.

Craig discusses: 

  • (01:34) The impact of the NHL’s salary cap
  • (04:04) The necessity of league expansion in non-traditional markets
  • (06:57) The merits of shortening the NHL season for better gameplay
  • (08:01) Atlanta’s potential for hosting a hockey team again
  • (18:59) Balancing emotional decisions and strategic trades in hockey
  • (30:12) The influence of steadfast leadership in sports organizations
  • And more

Resources:

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Connect with Craig Custance:

About Our Guest: 

Craig Custance is the Head of Creative Development at The Athletic, a New York Times company. Previously, he was an Editorial Director at The Athletic, where he oversaw the NHL, college football and baseball coverage. As a writer, he spent over a decade as an NHL insider at The Athletic, ESPN and Sporting News. His latest book, The Franchise: The Business of Building Winning Teams was released by Simon and Schuster in October 2024. He is also the author of the book Behind the Bench: Inside the Minds of Hockey’s Greatest Coaches.

Before joining The Athletic, Custance was a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, ESPN.com and ESPN Insider. He was hired by ESPN after three years as a national hockey writer for The Sporting News.

Custance got his start in journalism at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he was hired in 1999. At the AJC, Custance was part of the Innovations department where he helped launch the newspaper’s digital sports coverage. He also worked on the sports desk as a writer where he covered football, sports enterprise and ultimately became the Atlanta Thrashers beat writer. He left the AJC in 2008 after nearly a decade working for the newspaper.

He’s a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in journalism and lives in Clinton Township, Michigan with his wife Cassie and three children.

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