George Parros on the importance of NHL player safety (Puck Daddy Q&A)

The transition to a job with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety was natural for former enforcer George Parros.

As a player, Parros’ believed his role was to protect his teammates. With Player Safety his position is kind of similar, though it extends to all players in the NHL and doesn’t involve fisticuffs.

“For me, when I played, my number one concern was making sure my players felt as if they were in a safe environment and not getting taken advantage of,” Parros said. “It has kind of been in my DNA for a long time.”

The 36-year-old Parros played four years at Princeton, before finding his calling as an enforcer in the pros. He played 474 NHL games between the Los Angeles Kings, Colorado Avalanche, Anaheim Ducks, Florida Panthers and Montreal Canadiens and racked up 1,092 penalty minutes before deciding to retire in December of 2014.

In early September, the Department of Player Safety announced it had hired Parros to join its staff. He is one of three players in the Department of Player Safety, along with director Stephane Quintal and Chris Pronger.

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Parros is based in Las Vegas, which gives the league a Player Safety presence for the NHL’s westernmost teams. Though Parros has only been involved with the group for a few months, he has enjoyed his time there and hopes he has made an impact with overall player protection.

“This department kind of piqued my interest for sure because it allows you to stay involved in hockey in a very real and direct sense and was something I felt really comfortable with like as far as having an effect on the game, but also trying to ensure the players stay safe and maintain a physical level of play in the league in general,” Parros said.

We talked to Parros about his new role, the importance of player safety in today’s game, how he does his job from Las Vegas and how his economics degree from Princeton has helped him in his post playing days.

Q: How does your role work exactly?

PARROS: You caught me in the office. I’m in New York City in the war room standing at my post. Usually I stay out in Las Vegas and I travel around to Los Angeles and Anaheim and Phoenix and pretty much stay out in the west, kind of being a visible representative for the department and keep in contact with people as they need me to, and if some team comes town and might have someone to have a conversation with I can stay out there kind of in that general area and get things done as they need, but I’ll check in to the New York office once a month so that’s what I’m doing right now.

So you’re Player Safety’s eyes and ears out west to some degree?

Pretty much, yeah, exactly. We have Chris Pronger who is based out of St. Louis, so he has a lot of the Central Division. I think the perception is a lot of people around the Western Conference are – the NHL’s shut down because they’re back east and they’re on an island out there, so that’s part of the reason why it’s nice to have me out west so I can obviously be around and be a conduit to them if something comes up.

What’s your night like generally when you’re not in the office?

If I’m at home I’ll be watching TV. I’ll try to catch as many games as I can and try to jump back and forth, but I do like to focus on one of them – like an afternoon game or an East Coast game and then a West Coast game and I’ll jump around and kind of get a feel for what’s going on in the league that night but if something arises then we clip everything that happens whether it’s something very minor up to anything that would look more extreme, so we clip all sorts of stuff and it gets whipped around. If something significant comes across the desk then Stephane Quintal asks for our thoughts and we will independently let him know what we think about a certain play and gather our thoughts. If he decides it’s worthy of a hearing then we’ll have a hearing, and hear the other side’s point of view – the player’s point of view, the GM’s point of view and then we’ll all get together afterward and have a discussion to figure out where we stand.

What made you decide to get into Player Safety?

I definitely wanted to stay in hockey and was looking for a job when I retired. This department kind of piqued my interest for sure because it allows you to stay involved in hockey in a very real and direct sense and was something I felt really comfortable with like as far as having an effect on the game, but also trying to ensure the players stay safe and maintain a physical level of play in the league in general. It has kind of been our mandate and I feel like given my history I feel like I was well suited to do that. I never once got fined or suspended while I played my time and I played about as physical as anybody, so I felt it was a pretty good fit for me.

Did you reach out to Stephane or did he reach out to you?

I think it was a well sought after position by more than a few players, but I had been after (Quintal) as soon as I retired. I gave him a shout because I wanted to express my interest, so although they had a position open, they didn’t really fill one the previous season. I had maintained contact with him all throughout the season and the summer leading up to my hire. I kind of just stayed on top of him and he was great. He did express interest in bringing me on from the beginning but certainly they interviewed many other people and at the end of the day they chose me.

How important is the safety of players to you personally?

It’s of the utmost importance. I was a player. I consider it a brotherhood and I want to make sure no one is out there – we don’t like to see people get hurt and we certainly don’t like to have to suspend anybody but we prefer to have a very quiet room here. We don’t like to see anybody get hurt. We don’t like to suspend anybody for any sort of foul play, but it does happen and we add direction to how the players view certain plays and dangerous plays. For me, when I played, my number one concern was making sure my players felt as if they were in a safe environment and weren’t getting taken advantage of. It has kind of been in my DNA for a long time.

Were you ever taken advantage of in a situation playing hockey?

When I was playing, my philosophy was ‘you can do whatever you want to me. I don’t care, I can fend for myself.’ But if someone touched one of my guys in a way I felt was inappropriate or took advantage of them, that’s what set me off. ‘If you wanted to slash me in the face, that’s fine, we’ll deal with that later but keep your sticks and elbows and all that stuff off my teammates and we won’t have a problem.’

Are there certain types of plays that you think are in your area of expertise? That group in Player Safety has been together for a while and they seem to have a good understanding on what merits discipline and what doesn’t.

There are certainly plenty of guys in here that put in hours and hours and hours at their computers watching clips over and over again. We have one of our vice presidents Damian Echevarrieta, he’s an almanac and an encyclopedia of information on the rulebook. He knows it back and forth. There’s a lot of guys with a lot of knowledge and a deeper knowledge than I had of the rules and comparable hits and stuff like that. I think the biggest part of my education has been getting a great understanding of the rules and how they apply. Kind of learning a little bit of that language and then trying to build my own database for comparable hits and depth of knowledge, but there’s certainly a lot of it here. But I think that they look to me certainly just for my opinion in general of being a former player. It’s just me, (Pronger) and (Quintal) and we’ve got two other directors and plenty of guys who are coordinators that don’t have that particular viewpoint so I think in those instances they look to us for our view.

Does your Princeton education help you in a cerebral type role like this?

I don’t know if the education in particular helps me do this job, but what it does is obviously it teaches you really important lessons about time management and responsibility and diligence and articulation and things like that. Certainly it comes in handy when I do other things with the NHL as well like getting involved in subcommittees, equipment safety and concussion groups and all sorts of stuff like that so I think it has prepared me well for that life.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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