Color of Hockey: Singh stands tall behind scenes to support U.S. team

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog for the past 10 years. Douglas joined NHL.com in March 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, as part of the NHL's celebration of Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, he profiles Brij Singh, USA Hockey's manager of men's national team operations.

Brij Singh knows a thing or two about hockey, in all its forms.
He started playing field hockey as a child, gravitated to roller and ice hockey in high school, and represented the United States internationally in floorball, a hockey cousin.
These days, the former Los Altos, California, resident is representing his country as USA Hockey's manager of men's national team operations. Singh is working as team leader for the U.S. at the 2022 IIHF World Championship in Helsinki.
It's a job he performed at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, as well as for the 2022 U.S. national junior team and the 2021 Under-18 men's national team.
"I prepare the itinerary, our hotel, arrange our meals, everything associated with the team in a team services role kind of runs through me at some level," Singh said. "The primary responsibility of my job is to get the team to where they need to be with everything they need, and then allow them to have the best chance of success by managing everything off the ice."

John Vanbiesbrouck, USA Hockey assistant executive director for hockey operations, said Singh is "invaluable" to the organization.
"He plays an important role in ensuring our team operations run smoothly," Vanbiesbrouck said, "and does a really good job in managing the many variables that come with the events we play in across the world."
Singh began his journey into team management in the summer of 2017 when he was an intern in the NHL's corporate social responsibility wing at its New York office.
"The breadth of the world of hockey was really opened in those three months at the NHL corporate office," he said. "I knew the NHL was a league, 31 teams at the time, that obviously compete for the Stanley Cup. I had a general idea that the League was doing some work in the Hockey Is For Everyone campaign, Hockey Fights Cancer, all these great initiatives. It really showed the power of the shield, in my opinion. It was really inspiring to see, the work they did, and it was also just the power that the world of hockey has and the world of sport."

Singh had an internship with the Nashville Predators the following summer in their amateur hockey department, where he learned more about the sport from the ground level.
"I was on the ice teaching some of the learning programs, I was assisting with their hockey schools, I would assist the Kids Club at Bridgestone Arena," he said. "I was involved with any kind of summer programs at Bridgestone Arena, such as Professional Bull Riding Association or CMA Fest. It was very much a hands-on experience."
Singh's NHL experiences helped him land USA Hockey's Brendan Burke Internship in 2019. The internship is awarded annually to a recent college graduate interested in pursuing a career in hockey operations.
It was established in memory of Brendan Burke, a former student assistant for the University of Miami's men's hockey team and an openly gay player who died in a car accident in 2010 at the age of 21, just months after he came out to his family. His father, Brian Burke, is president of hockey operations for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Singh graduated from the University of Michigan in 2019.
"I sold programs on the first game they had there at USA Hockey Arena, I was the mascot, I helped sell tickets," he said. "I was kind of around everything that I could be."
Singh said he inherited his love of ice hockey from his father, who became a passionate Chicago Blackhawks fan when he immigrated to Chicago from India as a child.
"I remember very distinctly that whenever the Blackhawks were ever on TV, my father would sit the entire family down and have us watch the game," Singh said. "When I was growing up, we would get the newspaper when the [San Jose] Sharks schedule came out, and the first thing I would do was go right to my birthday in October and look to see if there was a home game around that weekend and go right to my dad and say, 'Well, it's my birthday, here's my birthday gift,' and point to the schedule.
"And lo and behold, my birthday, I'd always have two tickets somewhere to go watch the Sharks play. So it was a great experience having a dad that was into the hockey world."

But before Singh started playing ice hockey, his mother enrolled him in field hockey, mindful of the open ice check Mighty Ducks of Anaheim forward Paul Kariya took from New Jersey Devils defenseman Scott Stevens in Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final.
Singh played field hockey into his teens, hoping the U.S. men's team would return to the Olympics for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
"My goal at the time was to be an Olympian," he said. "The only way the U.S. was ever going to do that would be by hosting the Games. In 2016, Chicago was probably the strongest [U.S.] bid. They fell short to Rio [de Janeiro] and a couple of weeks later I was, 'Well, there's no point in me in continuing on,' and I ended up quitting, at least high-level field hockey. I still play recreationally and I'm a referee and umpire in Michigan right now."

Singh said he began playing roller hockey in high school at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, where one of his coaches, who was from Scandinavia, brought a floorball stick one day.
"We were captivated by this because it had a little dent in it and you could, like, kick the ball and scoop it up onto it and do all these crazy tricks," he said. "I went home and spent four hours on YouTube watching these videos and just got so engulfed in this that I was, like, 'I need to try this.'"
Singh connected with a group of local Swedish and Finnish expats who worked for technology companies in the area and regularly played floorball.

Playing with them inspired him to start floorball games at Bellarmine Prep. Singh later joined a floorball team and was asked if he would be interested in playing on a U.S. team that was being formed to compete in the 2015 U19 World Floorball Championships.
"I was, like, 'Sure, I'll miss my senior prom to go to Helsingborg, Sweden, to play in this tournament," he said. "We finished 15th out of 16, but it was a cool opportunity to be part of something unique and different."
Singh said he isn't sure where his ice hockey journey will take him next, but he's excited about the future.
"Ultimately I think what I really want to do is help grow this game," he said. "Just like it allowed me a great opportunity to grow as a person."
Photos: USA Hockey, USA Floorball, Adam Troy, Samii Stoloff, Brij Singh