DREGER: THE INS & OUTS OF BEING AN NHL INSIDER

By: Rachael Bishop

For NHL insiders like Darren Dreger, the NHL trade deadline is one of the busiest times of the year.

“The one month leading up to trade deadline, I spend the next 11 months trying to repair the damage from that, ” TSN’s Dreger explained on the Rod Pedersen Show. “Because you’re carpet-bombing everybody, right?”

This ‘carpet bombing’ as Dreger explains, sometimes annoys league executives as some “general managers don’t want to be pestered as much,” hence the reason for the 11 months of damage control following the persistent communication in the weeks and days leading up to the trade deadline. It is not just the general managers that are bombarded with questions from the likes of Dreger, Bob McKenzie and Pierre Lebrun. Insiders have sources throughout organizations from agents, (and in the pre-social media era) teammates and other players.

Despite all of the constant information that is easily accessible on social media in 2021, getting information about potential moves in the hockey world is still not as simple as making a quick phone call to a general manager.

“I can maybe count on one hand in 20 plus years the number of times it’s been that simple.” Dreger says, “Now on occasion, I’ve had a general manager just flat out text me or call me and say ‘hey by the way, we’ve just acquired so and so, and this is what we gave up,’ “it’s almost never that easy.”

In addition, Dreger explains, all of the TSN insiders make sure that they work very closely together via ‘a small group chat’ to ensure that the information they are about to share with the hockey community is correct. Dreger also mentions that he, McKenzie, Lebrun and Senior Hockey Reporter Frank Seravalli “we do not care who breaks the story, as we as a collectively break the story, so you share your sources in that sense.”

It is safe to say that this weekend, the final one before the trade deadline on Monday, will be a busy one for the TSN Hockey Insider group chat; full of “carpet bombing” league executives, phone calls and text messages to colleagues, the final day of one of the busiest months of the year for an NHL insider.

Dreger gets to do it all again in just 11 months from now.

*TSN’s Tradecentre coverage begins on Monday, April 12th at 6 am CST, 8 am ET