Pat Byrne M.D: Breaking down Canucks 2026-27 schedule, and a look at how timing changes affect younger players
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Who is Pat Byrne and how did he become the 'Sleep Doctor' for pro sports?
This is Harrison Price from the Historic Wall Center, and it's time to reconnect with an old friend, Blake. He is known affectionately in Vancouver Connect circles as the Sleep Doctor. Actual name is Pat Byrne, and he does a lot of work with... major league franchises around the continent and beyond, as well as businesses and industry in terms of sleep science. And it is great to have Mr. Byrne back on Sakaris and Price. How are you doing, Pat? Great to see you.
Great. Yeah, great to see both you guys. It's been a few years.
It has. But, of course, this is the gentleman who revolutionized sleep and travel in the National Hockey League with those Mike Gillis teams towards the end of the 2010s and into the teens when, of course, the Vancouver Canucks produced the best away record in their history, the best away record in the National Hockey League in 2011. And this guy had a big hand in it. Um, we'll catch us up at last 15 years. So what's your life and career looks like after getting all that notoriety with these cadets.
Well, that was great. You know, I started working with the NFL. You know, I went down and worked with the Seahawks and the Sounders and the Mariners and then was down in Dallas a few years working with the Mavericks and then in Brooklyn Nets and Tampa Bay Rays. Worked with, you know, all the different leagues. It was great. And I was in Australia for quite a while working with some of the teams down there and Get to travel. I do a fair bit of personal sleep coaching with some of the top players in the NBA and others. A lot of this thing that we created with the whole sleep thing just kind of blew up. I mean, literally across all the leagues now. And everything that we got criticized for doing with the Canucks now is standard fare.
Every team in the world is doing it.
You said Dallas, but most of your clients are coastal, which makes a lot more sense. Dallas has to be one of the few central teams that you do because they get to sort of call their shots and little puddle jumpers for the most part. But they are southern, so maybe that's the issue there. But the issue is far bigger for coastal teams, is it not?
Yeah.
It is, I guess, in terms of travel.
But, you know, this sort of general sleep issue, you know, we've had teams that, you know, they'll come off a long road trip and get the players up early next morning, right? Dumb stuff like that. So it's just trying to... get them to deal with some of the basic issues. And the NBA, even though they play very similar to the NHL, the NBA is a bit different because they don't play 23 players. They play five players. They're seven players. And those guys get pretty wrecked. But the other thing that fell out of the whole The whole system was that all the teams ran around, tried to do all the sleep stuff and had absolutely no idea what they're doing. And quite frankly, they screwed it up, right? They started taking the player's sleep data and using it against them in contract negotiations and score.
A lot of this stuff got into the CBAs and just saying, yeah, we're not doing this anymore. So they don't get the kind of data that we got. And what Gillis and Gilman and I set up was a system where I was the only person who actually saw the player's data, individual data, me and the player, right? And so we kept it completely confidential. What the team got was an aggregated group of all the sleep. So we could say, look, when you're traveling here, here's when the bulk of the players get up or when they go to bed. So we need to get more space for them to sleep, right?
That's fascinating because it doesn't surprise me. And especially, I mean, the first thing my mind went to is the video game era or age here that we're at. A lot of these young players, they're going to stay up late playing video games. This has become a bit of an internet sensation story here with this team, but it's been elsewhere. And they don't want to get caught for staying up late and playing video games, right?
Well, yeah, one of the misunderstandings, and that's what we talked about
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is Pat Byrne and how did he become the 'Sleep Doctor' for pro sports?
0:02–5:24
2
How did Pat Byrne expand his sleep consulting career after working with the Canucks?
5:24–14:15
3
What privacy issues arose from teams collecting player sleep data and how were they handled?
14:15–17:56
4
Why do younger players have different sleep patterns and how does gaming affect them?
17:56–21:00
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Sekeres & Price Show
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