Brian Lawton

We were more of the do what you're told

This generation now, and a lot of this dovetails into the coaching and all the things that are going on with organizations, it has to do with earning respect from the players.

Because they'll ask you what's going on, and we're seeing some potentially extreme events in that regard.

Connor McDavid, Austin Matthews.

um you know the list is long zacharensky is going to be a free agent a couple years like these are the types of players that not only are going to ask um but they're going to get answers and you know sid was has been a great ambassador for the game and owing for that matter as well that's the kind of generation preceding this one and you really never heard of those guys you know as a matter of fact you know having some players on that team when i was an agent and

knowing lots of Sid's teammates, you know, Sid was, is like the perfect player to have on your team.

He's going to work hard.

He's going to support what the organization's doing.

But deep down, I never got the feeling that he wanted to have any say in how it was run.

I think that's changing a little bit in today's world.

Berkey and I had one disagreement on RJM Burger.

We both have laughed about it.

You know, the world is different then.

Like, Kimber, I've told you before, like, when I sold my small representation firm, I did it with the intent of wanting to have more support every week if I was going to continue to be an agent because...

It was literally the law of the jungle.

Kill or be killed.

I don't want to insult anybody in the military, but it felt like that.

Everybody was trying to give it to everyone, and a lot of it came down to your overall leverage.

for me the answer for that was quite simply um selling my firm but it came with a very funny caveat that i really have never talked about and that was that yes you have to buy my firm and you know i eventually went from my own firm to advantage which is octagon hockey today but you also must give me up to 10 million dollars so i can grow this firm quickly

that's exactly what we did to be honest with you for the very reason i'm citing is i wanted to have a little more cover so that we could handle negotiations a little smoother so if someone really tried to give it to me they knew they were going to see me they might get me on tuesday but i'll be back on thursday with somebody else and it's really in everybody's best interest to keep this a little more civil and it worked for the most part um