The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: NHL Player Agent Ian Pulver

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

NHL agent Ian Pulver joins Jeff Marek to break down the new contract for his client Tristan Luneau and what went into getting the deal done with the Anaheim Ducks. Pulver discusses Luneau’s development and the type of player Anaheim believes he can become, why NHL teams are increasingly looking to lock up young talent early, and how the league’s evolving contract landscape is changing negotiations between players, agents and general managers. They also get into Anaheim’s unique offseason, including the impact of the Ducks’ offer-sheet situation and Pavel Mintyukov’s contract, before pulling back the curtain on the life of an NHL agent, the relationships behind negotiations and what it takes to represent players in today’s league. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the meantime, it is a pleasure of welcome to the program, Ian Pulver, from the Will Sports Group to talk about, amongst other things, the latest Tristan Leno, massive deal. Six years, 7.2 is the AAV on this one. I'd be smiling to, Agent Pulver. I would be smiling to. First of all, congratulations on the deal. I want to do the Coyven deal as well. Like, Will Sports Group is really hitting a stride here early in the season. How did this one come together with Leno? Because the first thing that people looked at and said, They said, 14 games. Look at this number. Well, first, hi, Geoffrey. Thanks for helping me on the sheet. My pleasure. We go, just for everyone,

we go back to the old days of Bob Goodnow and Ian Pulver, setting up free agency in July, where this guy's going to sign and that guy's going to sign. It was like a domino effect going through the, through the NHL. That doesn't happen anymore, but it is feeling, once again now, like this is the era of player empowerment, Ian?

Yeah, it's really an odd time, I must say. It really has changed the landscapes changing faster than anybody, I believe, anticipated or forecast it. I often wonder, where did all the money come from? You know, it's like all of a sudden it's here. You know, where was it? I get the players were paying back money from the COVID years, but it's exploded exponentially and will continue to explode.

And I think that teams are, certain teams are conducting business a certain way. And other teams kind of were out in front of it and lock guys up. And now it's very odd. The locker rooms are going to be really, really odd if, you know, when guys get signed. Let me, let me pause on that because, listen, this is a conversation that you and I had back in 2005. And that is the idea that one of the byproducts of a salary cap is it pits player versus player, right? It's like what the old Carney saying, what we gain on the roundabout, we lose on the swing. So for every Leo Carlson dollar, that's one less dollar that someone else on the Anaheim

docs has the ability to get. One of the things I think that we're all wondering about here is what is, or is there even going to be a middle class in the NHL anymore? Well, I mean, the middle class could very well get squeezed out as we forecasted back in 2005, and it completely hasn't been. You know, we were partially wrong. I mean, from time to time, you see, you know, players cast the Lamarillo Island, as we saw it early, you know, in the salary cap era, where you see big contracts put in the minors. But going forward, it's going to be fascinating to watch what happens with the middle class.

and will the top eight guys on the team take all the money? And then you got to remember the NHLPA has done a good job banging up the NHL minimum, which will soon be a million dollars. And so, you know, that's good money. So it's going to be interesting to see how that comes about. What's going to be really fascinating is to watch when the Montreal Canadiens made determined to jump into the pool of unrestricted free agency and bring in a player like Marchenko, okay, who they may commit to pay higher than Hudson and higher than Suzuki.

And the Leafs didn't have that problem with Neelander and Matthews. He kind of fit in. And what the locker room will be like when that's. happens. I would imagine the players being the players will accept it because they want to win and understand that that's how markets move, but that's where it's going to be important, how the proper veterans in the room and, you know, coaches and management dealing with it. Isn't it different, though? Like, aren't players wired differently? Like, I can remember, I remember when Brett Lindross with the Islanders made his money.

And I think that was, I think it was $5 million was the total. It was a different era, obviously. It was $5 million in the total contract. And there were a lot of veterans who are like, what is this? Like five million. This is a joke for this player hasn't played in the NHL. But like it seems to me like players now are like they don't have that that high key. I know players always want to make

you know, $1 more than the next guy and I get all that, but I don't know the player. It was the old Gratzky Lemieux. Well, there's that too. And honestly, like there's the, I still remember when, uh, in Toronto, when Jason Allison signed for one, one point five million and then like a couple of days later, Eric Lindrow signed for

a 1.5 million. Just to get that like a little bit more than the player just, but it seems to me now, Ian, and you represent a lot of these players. You're closer to it than I am. it seems now that players are of the mind that, hey, you got your bag, that's great. I'm going to try to get mine. Yeah, I think so.

I mean, you know, it's so different now. I mean, back in the early 90s, when a player went on the board, the other players were genuinely happy for that player because that meant they would get more. Okay. And so, like, that used to be the culture of the 94 Rangers or the 92 Hawks. I remember having player meetings with Steve Larmer and Chris Chelyos and David's, Denny Savard and whatnot and all the teams. And everybody was rooting for each other because the salaries were exploding. The average league's salary was 271, $271,000 back in 91.

And so it was a different time, a different era. Now, yeah, I think everybody just moves on, you know, like the power. of this phone and real-time information connecting them to each other and in the industry and then the other sports and entertainment world and the world in general has conditioned everybody one to get to one to be looking after themselves a little bit more and to kind of water rolling off the ducks back until it impacts them and then when it impacts that they're not happy. Okay.

Let me go back to the beginning then. How did we get to the Tristan Leno number? And did Zeev Boyum specifically, did that contract change everything for defensemen? Or was it not necessarily the Zeev Boyam, but maybe the Pavl-Minchikov number that changed things? Like, how did we get to a play? where your client is making a very healthy salary here.

It is a six-year contract. 7.2 is the AAV. How did we get there? You know, before I get there, it triggers memories of Eric Lindrosse coming into the league, never having played and signing that monster contract that paid him more, I believe, than I don't want to say it.

the neighborhood of Gretz and Lemieux, and he didn't ever play. How did we get there? First, let me say, Tristan Luno is a really, really good hockey player, okay? Yeah. Who spent two years in San Diego, and they had the Truba, they had the Goudis, they had the John Carlson on the right side last year. There was more or less a block. They wanted Tristan playing a lot of hockey, you know, And then especially when Carlson came in. And so the right side was locked. They had Lecombe, Mentecov on the left side. And so, you know, they knew the player.

They drafted the player. They know what he's capable of. Management. I've talked to management now about Tristan Luno for three or four years, along with my associates. and so he's a year away from a free being a restricted free agent who could hit the market and possibly be offer sheeted, right shot defenseman. And they kind of wanted to hedge their bet and saw the value of Tristan Luno. and saw the value of a long-term deal.

The Mintakov situation plus the Leo Carlson situation kind of maybe made them do their business a little bit differently. Yeah, the BWIM deal, you know, we play a full year and maybe we're off or sheeted or maybe we're in the Bweem situation. and so we have been talking about Tristan Luno for quite some time and it made a whole lot of sense for both parties to strike a deal because I truly believe they know what he's all about and Tristan knows what he's all about too.

Was it you guys that wanted to initiate the conversation now or was it Anaheim? You mentioned like, you know what? If we go into January and he's lining it up and first pair of this and points that, maybe the number's higher. Like, how did the dynamic work? It's conversational.

Like, Tristan would have been fine playing through the year. Anaheim probably would have been okay with it. But, you know, it's, it's, It's a series of conversations. Hey, listen, I know Pod for Beak for 35 years, right? Like, you know, another management team, they got Scott Niedermeyer there and they got Whitey Stapleton there. And, you know, there's constant conversations about Luno, Seneca, different players

that they may draft and things like that. And just checking in on the players and their training is what I'm saying. Right. And so it just kind of was conversational and it just got triggered that way. You know, I think I'm going to change the name of this show from the sheet to the offer sheet considering how much I end up talking about it here on the program. But how much? Why is it called the sheet, by the way?

I just wanted something sort of generic like game sheet. Like this is a sort of wrap at the night. I used to do a blog called The Sheet, which sort of satisfied that condition. And it kind of worked for this one. That it was going to be like, what's that? Just do something. How many times did you hear when like, like, How many times you ever heard or said to any of your clients, just get on the sheet?

Just get on the sheet. Just get on the sheet. Do something. You know, jump over the boards. Get a goal. Do something. Get on the sheet. Right.

You don't want to have like, you don't want to have like Cheerios beside your name every, every game. Right. You got to do something to get on the sheet. Donuts, bagels, Cheerios. All of it. You don't want, you don't want, you got to do something. You got to do something. You got to do something.

You got to do something. So here then becomes the question. I've always maintained that it isn't the fight in hockey that. Curbs behavior, as much as it is the threat of the fight that curbs behavior. Is the threat of an offer sheet the new fighting major for agents and general managers? It's the threat of the offer sheet that gets things down. Yeah, which is really incredible. I mean, you know, I, one of the first things I ever did at the NHL Players Association was hand

deliver an offer sheet to Brendan Shanahan, who, was living out on the Queensway back in i want to say circa 1991 he was offer sheeted by the by the saint louis blues when he was a new jersey devil and there was that whole stephen shanahan history and i mean you know lo and behold there were offer sheets were far and few between over the years I believe there was a Federov offer sheet. Oh, that was a massive one. Yeah, that was that was Carmanos and Illich. There was more than just what met the eye with that offer sheet.

That was almost personal. I mean, we used to negotiate 92, 94, 2004, 2004, the offer sheet chart, what will happen. Like, everybody would be gone, there's never going to be any offer sheet. Like, we're negotiating these numbers and the drop at conference compensation. and like everybody was like they're never going to do that to each other maybe one you know and now it's very real because only one team can win and it's very competitive and I find the sense of urgency out there for teams to make the playoffs and win rounds and that's why I think

some of these owners don't want expansion because it's going to be even harder to make the playoffs. Yeah. I honestly, I'm with there are and some significant ones who do not want. Right. And that's why I think the NHL right now is as much as Bill Daley did the sort of summer rounds and talked about expansion, not just in North America, but in Europe as well. All of a sudden now everyone's kind of pumping the pump on it. Right. With offer sheet. So yeah, there's there's it's there is a leverage play with the offer sheet from a team's perspective, of agents' perspective, but really, you know, we're hoping, we're hoping, and Tristan Luno would acknowledge it, like, we're hoping by the end of this contract or through this contract that

Anaheim has a great deal. Like, it's okay, right? And it proves to be a good business decision for Anaheim and also Tristan, and he's an unrestricted free agent at 29. And you're revivist, visit it again. But, you know, that's what we're all hoping. And it looks like Anaheim's going to be headed into another here, and we'll see how the season goes. But last season was a bonanza for Beckett Seneca. That's another one. Like this all seems to be sort of colliding here with the Anaheim ducks, whether it's Carlson, whether it's Lino, whether it's Cudor Goce, on the, Pavel Minchikoff, on the horizon, and Beckett Seneca here.

How's Beckett feeling? Beckett, Beckett's a wonderful personality. I mean, Beckett's feeling like, if you see his interviews, Beckett likes to have fun. He wants to be great. He's a very competitive individual.

But what makes him special is his demeanor and character to want to have joy in the game and, you know, hopefully win. And he's put on weight. He looks great. Let me ask you about another one of your clients because the last two contracts by the Will Sports Groups,

Will Sports Group has really raised some eyebrows. Tristan Lino, yesterday before that, Vili Coivinen, who I really do need to mention, that game against the Philadelphia Flyers, that line with Hollander and Hendricks, looked outstanding. Love here. Ophthalmys. It looked really good.

How did that one come together? Because everyone looked at that one too and said, whoa, eight years, four million AAV for a player hasn't been in the league here very long. How is, I mean, is this similar to the Leno conversations

with Kyle Dubas? A little bit. I mean, that was more of this conversation with Dubus and these are long conversations. talking about players evolution. Coyvenin was a little bit different.

You know, I will say this in Vili Coyvenin's defense. It's really hard to get on the power of play in Pittsburgh. When you have Lattang, you have Carlson, you have a guy named Crosby and of Jenny Malkin. You know, Kyle's planning for the future because they cannot play forever. So Kyle's always been a creative mind. And those conversations hatched with Vuki and Kyle a while ago.

And it made a whole lot of sense. And Kyle came out and said it. He's betting it. And Kyle, both contracts have the one third buyout to protect the team if this doesn't work. having said that, we're all hoping, you know, it works. And over time, you may not see the real Vili. I mean, the real Vili Coivin is a skilled individual who, you know, is very competitive, who one day will be a great power play guy in the National League.

But like I said, it's hard to get power play time in Pittsburgh. but yeah conversations again Kyle sees where the markets are going Kyle has other players younger players on that team that will either go similar to Villy more than Ville or less than Ville so he stuck a peg in the ground

and we'll see where it plays out I want to wrap on this one here really quickly and I know you're busy so but I want to get you one thought on someone who who reminded me today that you were a student of his at UBC Law, and that's Brian Burke, who goes into the Hockey Hall of Fame this year. Do you ever thought on Berkey, Ian?

Your old teacher? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, Burkey is, I'm indebted to Brian Burke. I mean, I scratched and clawed and grinded my way into his class at UBC. Brian was, I was around circa 88. I was in second year. They started a sports law class. And for third year, I could talk for hours on Berkey.

But I'm indebted to Brian Burke. He, I found someone that inspired me back in my law school days. And, you know, I'll never forget. He gave an opening lecture to the law school. 200 people in the, in the, in the auditorium. He was in the front. It was before we went into the class and people came in and listened and he talked about, you know, knowing or whether you knew or you thought you knew. And, you know, he had this big speech and he goes, you know, everybody here wants to think that they know about sports and the business.

And how many of you in this auditorium have read the USA Today Sports Science? section today and every day. And lo and behold, I was sitting there and I had a routine in Vancouver every morning to go and buy the USA Today and had the sports section sitting in front of me in the auditorium and no one else did. And at that moment, I knew that I was on to something. And over the years, Berkey, he's a legend. Burkey, we faced off against each other at the N. Oh, yes, you did. Yes, you did.

Yep. And God bless Berkey. I mean, like he, I'm indebted to him and we'll never forget. Here's what people tend to forget about Brian because we focus so much on Brian, whether it's his work with the league or whether it's his work as a general manager in the NHL. People tend to forget he was an agent, right? Yes, he was. When Brian started.

He was. an agent, right? And I think it was, oh, geez, Joel Otto, I think was one of him, the big sign of the Calgary Flames. And then I know it was Joel Otto and then Bob Goodnow took over his practice and through Berkey, Bob got connected to Brett Hall. And one thing led to another for Bob, who then eventually gave up his practice and went and ran the NHLPA. Wow. But Jeff, Jeff, the book floss is right here. It's funny too.

Okay, you know what? I'll tell you what. And this is a pet gripe of mine. So if you look at, because a lot of us are doing all these hits and shows from home, this is like, this was the lesson of COVID that taught us that we don't have to be in studios to do these things. We have the technology all to be at home like you are right now. And it's funny. If you look at all the bookshelves that people have themselves in front of on all.

of these hits. Burke's Law is on all of them. And what it does, Ian, it underscores something that I've be moaned for a long time. And that is, we get books from players all the time. We get books from coaches. We get books from referees.

Well, we don't get books from are general managers. The people that make the decisions that actually change the game. The people that know all the secrets, know all the moves, and the moves that didn't happen. and all those things that charted the course of history,

the cascade behind them as they leave, they don't write books about it or they don't talk about it. Right. It goes to the crematorium. And we talked about doing the right thing for hockey. I don't know. I don't know what to tell people what to do. But I think there should be a sort of,

you should carry yourself with an obligation of when I'm done and all the people that influence are out of the game, I can write about it or tell those stories. So history has. more links to it. Yeah. We can understand. Does that resonate with you, Ian? Does that make sense to you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. Like, you know, Bob Goodnow passed away and, um, yes. He never got to write his book. It would have been a hell of a book. That's for sure. Um, but some people, you know, feel when they're really close involved in everything,

they don't want to tell the real story. Well, one day, even though, and I, I, I really enjoyed when when Bob led the Players Association. Even, you know, maybe, maybe one day there's a, there's an Ian Pulver that wants to write about the big one in 0405. And tell all of those stories. You never know. Maybe Ian. Maybe we'll collaborate on something, Jeffrey.

You're looking for a ghost writer. All right. Thanks. Congratulations on the Leno deal. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Have a good day.