Former Penguins general manager Ray Shero dies at 62
Ray Shero noted the pattern. And laughed about it.
The son of legendary NHL coach Fred Shero, Ray Shero followed in his father’s sizeable footsteps and got into the business of professional hockey on the management side for more than 30 years.
So, when Ray Shero’s college-educated sons, Chris and Kyle, entered the real world looking for work, they, as one might suspect, got into hockey as well, finding gigs as amateur scouts with NHL clubs.
“I guess it’s the family business,” Shero guffawed with pride while chatting at the United States Hockey Hall of Fame ceremony held Dec. 4 in Pittsburgh.
Shero was largely successful in that vocation, particularly during an eight-year stint as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The peak of his tenure and career was leading the Penguins to the franchise’s third Stanley Cup title in 2009.
Shero died Tuesday at the age of 62. The Minnesota Wild, by whom Shero was employed as a senior adviser, announced his death Wednesday. No cause was reported.
A native of St. Paul, Minn., Shero was hired as the Penguins’ ninth general manager in May 2006, and in short order drove a franchise — blessed with young emerging talents such as Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury — into becoming a champion.
“A great (general manager),” former Penguins coach Dan Byslma said by phone Wednesday. “A great mentor. For me, whether by hook or crook, was a guy that took a chance on me as a coach and a person.”
“The greatest testament I think to Ray as a (general manager) is recognizing how special of an environment and atmosphere that he developed in Pittsburgh. (Ex-Penguins forward) Billy Guerin’s words ring in my ears about just the greatest experience in his hockey career and the family environment and family that the Pittsburgh Penguins were.”
When Shero took over the Penguins, the franchise had not qualified for the postseason for half a decade. That futility allowed the franchise to draft the likes of Crosby, Malkin as well as Fleury, and following the dismissal of previous general manager Craig Patrick, Shero was installed to build around that core of would-be luminaries for a franchise not too far removed from its most recent bankruptcy in the late 1990s.
Basically, the Penguins had not spent a great deal of money on players or luxuries for players in quite some time before Shero’s arrival.
The first signing Shero made was defensive defenseman Mark Eaton, previously of the Nashville Predators. Shero was familiar with Eaton as he was previously the Predators assistant general manager.
“When Ray came in, it was pretty immediate the things that he brought in to turn it into a first-class place,” said Eaton, now an assistant general manager with the Chicago Blackhawks. “Guys were joking, they kind of went from the minors to the NHL. No expense was spared to make sure players got things that they wanted and redoing some things in the locker room. Just kind of creating the atmosphere there.
“And obviously the importance of veteran guys. Bringing in guys like (forward) Gary Roberts that have had successful careers, that won Stanley Cup (titles) elsewhere and being able to surround the future which was then the Sids, the Fleurys, the Malkins, the (Kris) Letangs with guys like that that had been there, reached the pinnacle. Just to have the young guys around those types of guys day in and day out played a huge role as well.”
Shero also overhauled the hockey operations department, hiring the likes of Tom Fitzgerald, Jason Botterill, Chuck Fletcher, Patrick Allvin and others. Several of those staffers became general managers of other NHL teams after leaving Pittsburgh.
Allvin joined the Penguins as a European scout in 2006 after Shero’s arrival. Today, he is the Vancouver Canucks general manager.
“He was a very inspiring person to be around,” Allvin said. “He cared for you as an individual and wanted everybody that was part of the Penguins to be part of the family there. He created a nice environment with how he empowered his staff and held us accountable. You just look around the league, how many hockey executives that came out of the Pittsburgh Penguins there during Ray Shero’s tenure there.”
Fitzgerald, currently the New Jersey Devils’ general manager, organized a reunion of sorts with Shero and his former lieutenants during the United States Hockey Hall of Fame ceremony.
It wound up being one of the last times the group gathered with Shero.
“We didn’t know but all came into Pittsburgh,” Allvin said. “Tom Fitzgerald set up a table for us. We had an unbelievable 24 hours there. It was amazing to see him.”
The Penguins made a 47-point improvement during Shero’s first season (2006-07) and returned to the postseason. The next season, it marched all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, thanks in part to Shero pulling off one of the biggest trades in franchise history, acquiring All-Star forward Marian Hossa from the Atlanta Thrashers.
After the Penguins fell to the powerful Detroit Red Wings, Hossa turned down a contract extension offered by Shero and signed with the Red Wings.
Undeterred, Shero augmented the roster, adding the likes of forward Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin through trades throughout the 2008-09 campaign.
Additionally, he made a bold in-season decision to fire incumbent coach Michel Therrien as the team languished during the regular season. Bylsma, promoted from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League, replaced Therrien in mid-February.
Four months later, the Penguins defeated the Red Wings and Hossa to claim the franchise’s third Stanley Cup.
“The phone call came from Ray on Feb. 14,” Bylsma recalled. “Ray is wonderfully frank but an amazingly effective communicator. The conversation when he called was, ‘Are you in your office?’ I was not in my office at the time. He said, ‘Well, I’ll call you back in five minutes. Make sure you’re in your office.’ That conversation was about the opportunity to coach the Penguins.”
Though Shero won the NHL’s General Manager of the Year award in 2013, he was unable to repeat championship success with the Penguins and was fired in 2014.
Before joining the Penguins, he was an assistant general manager with the Ottawa Senators and Predators. After leaving the Penguins, he served as general manager of the New Jersey Devils before joining the Wild in 2021. He also worked in various executive capacities with USA Hockey, including the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.
Much of the success the Penguins enjoyed for the better part of two decades — the team qualified for the postseason every year between 2007 and 2022 — was launched by Shero.
“Ray Shero was a big part of my early days in Pittsburgh,” Crosby said in a statement issued by the team. “He gave me a lot of opportunity as a young captain and supported me throughout his time. He did so much for our organization, and my memories with him are special. I am grateful for our time spent here and that we were able to share a Stanley Cup championship together.”
That triumph came not only through Shero’s acumen for evaluating talent but also dealing with players, coaches and staff on an intimate human level.
“Every mid-term meeting, he made sure that the hockey (operations staffers) had their wives or spouse there with them,” Allvin said. “He made sure they got treated very well. If there were meetings down in Florida, he made sure we did our work in the morning and made sure the families were hanging out together in the afternoons.
“The little things, birthdays and stuff, he always cared.”
Shero knew, all too well, this was a family business.
“That’s just staying true to who you are and how you were raised,” Eaton said. “Making sure the stresses of the game and stresses of winning don’t ever change your core values as a person. And I don’t think Ray ever allowed that to happen.
“Him obviously growing up in a hockey family and his father being who he was, getting to know Ray away from the rink, his family, that was the core to who he was. He managed in the same way.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
Remove the ads from your TribLIVE reading experience but still support the journalists who create the content with TribLIVE Ad-Free.