Wysh List: The NHL team being run by a fan - ESPN

NEWARK, NJ — «Do you still think I shouldn't be the general manager of this team?»

I'm sitting in a lounge at the Prudential Center across from Sunny Mehta, who was hired as the general manager of the New Jersey Devils, despite my apparent protestations. I didn't recall holding this particular opinion, but a quick search revealed a podcast interview where I fully endorsed his candidacy for the team's vacancy — provided he had an experienced executive working above him with the Devils.

«I wouldn't want him to, like, run the whole show,» I said at the time.

And now Sunny Mehta is running the whole show… and taking some measure of satisfaction watching me squirm while singed by my own hot take.

I've known Sunny for a bit now. His first podcast interview was on the old «ESPN On Ice» show with me and Emily Kaplan. I should have known this gotcha moment was coming, because when you sit down at a table with Sunny Mehta you assume he's going to be systematically prepared in ways that you are not.

Mehta, 48, is the latest in a wave of NHL general managers with roots in the analytics movement and taking nontraditional paths to their front office jobs. Eric Tulsky, the movement's standard-bearer, built a Stanley Cup winner in Carolina 20 years after analyzing the synthesis of cadmium-free nanocrystals for clinical applications as a scientist for a nanotech company in Washington state.

Like Tulsky, Mehta has an untypical background. While other current GMs were inhaling Zamboni fumes at the rink, Mehta was a derivatives trader in Chicago and a professional poker player, having authored two books on card-playing strategy. Like Tulsky, he entered the NHL first as a data consultant and then as an analytics director, before becoming an