Longtime NHL player agent Grossman remembered as friend to clients

Brian Leetch was just a teenager when he met Jay Grossman in the mid-1980s.

Leetch was a budding star defenseman playing at Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut, and Grossman was beginning his career as a player agent, scouting for potential clients.

“He was doing kind of those runner jobs like a couple of those agents,” Leetch said this week. “They were just building relationships with the players and the families.” 

That was the beginning of a relationship that lasted 40 years, including Grossman representing Leetch throughout his 18 seasons in the NHL with the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins before the defenseman retired in 2006. So, when Grossman died on March 17 at age 60 after a more than two-year battle with lung cancer, Leetch lost more than his former agent.

He lost his friend.

“I had a hard time with it,” said Leetch, who attended the service for Grossman on Martha’s Vineyard on March 20. “It just hits you sometimes. He was my buddy. He was taking care of me. I looked up to him even though I knew we're basically the same age. And I’m like, ‘He's freaking gone.’”

Leetch, a two-time winner of the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman (1991-92, 1996-97) and a 2009 inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame, was among a host of star players Grossman represented during his more than 40 years as a player agent. His index of retired clients also included defenseman Sergei Zubov, goalies Pekka Rinne and Nikolai Khabibulin, and forwards Ilya Kovalchuk and Alexei Zhamnov.

In recent years, his PuckAgency teamed with the OT Sports Group to represent young players such as Carolina Hurricanes goalie Brandon Bussi, Calgary Flames forward Matt Coronato, Seattle Kraken forward Eeli Tolvanen, Vegas Golden Knights forward prospect Trevor Connelly and Boston Bruins forward prospect James Hagens. 

Although Grossman cut back on his work last summer to begin more aggressive treatments, OT Sports Group co-founder John Kofi Osei-Tutu said he remained an important resource, including while negotiating the three-year, $5.7 million contract Bussi signed with Carolina on Feb. 16.

“When he started those treatments, he started to cognitively decline a bit, and that was expected, and he slowed down,” Osei-Tutu said. “But I could tell you every time I was getting on the phone with Jay thinking, ‘Let's talk about whatever just to spend time with him,’ he'd be like, ‘Before anything, where are we at with Bussi? Did you call (Hurricanes general manager Eric) Tulsky? What's Tulsky saying?’ This guy to his last hour was still willing to fight for his players.”

Grossman, who is survived by his wife, Nancy; son, Justin; and daughter, Avery, remained positive throughout his battle after being diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer in December 2023. He initially kept his diagnosis within a tight private circle, not even telling his father, who died of lung cancer last April, because he didn’t want to worry him. Grossman’s sister also died of lung cancer three days after his father died.

Leetch didn’t learn Grossman had cancer until attending Grossman’s father’s funeral. Rinne said he found out about eight months ago.

“He never wanted to make it about him,” Rinne said. “Obviously, I would have loved to know before that and try to support him, but since I learned about it, we started talking way more regularly, and the one thing that was constant, I have a 5-year-old son and another son who is 10 months old, and he would ask every couple weeks for pictures of my kids and things like that. It was really, really touching. 

“But even towards the end, he was really hopeful. He had found this treatment plan that seemed to be working a little better. He knew that it was an uphill battle, but the way he approached it, he was the one who was still carrying the spirit. He wasn't sulking or anything like that.”

Rinne, who played 15 seasons in the NHL with the Nashville Predators (2005-2021) and won the Vezina Trophy as the League’s top goalie in 2017-18, said Grossman was instrumental in helping him get comfortable living and playing in the United States after he arrived from Finland in 2005.

An eighth-round pick (No. 258) by Nashville in the 2004 NHL Draft, Rinne had an agent in Finland who worked for PuckAgency, and the goalie spoke with Grossman on the phone a few times but never met him in person before being sent to Milwaukee of the American Hockey League following his first NHL training camp.

“He was really crucial at the time just to help me settle into U.S. with whatever it might be, getting my first phone,” Rinne said. “I didn't have any credit, so I needed a lot of help even with getting a rental apartment and everything like that. As a European player, you almost have to be lucky a little bit. I wasn't like a super top prospect. I didn't have agents lining up, calling me or my family or anything like that. 

“I didn't really get to choose, and I was so fortunate that Jay was my agent and ended up working with him my whole career.”

Rinne described Grossman as “a steady person in the background” who was always there when he needed him. Leetch’s experience with him was similar.

Grossman, whose office was located only a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, the Rangers’ home arena, got his start as an agent working for Art Kaminsky’s Athletes and Artists (which eventually evolved into PuckAgency) in 1985. After Kaminsky negotiated Leetch’s initial contract with New York, which he signed after playing for the United States at the 1988 Calgary Olympics, Grossman took over as Leetch’s lead agent and guided him throughout the remainder of his career, including his final one-year contract with the Bruins in 2005-06.

“Never once did I ever think of changing agents or seeing if someone else could do something better for me or get me more money,” said Leetch, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 1994, when the Rangers won their first championship in 54 years. “I was just really, really happy to have him, and to have the relationship and proximity with him was great. I was lucky.”

While Grossman made it easier for Leetch, former Rangers GM Neil Smith remembers butting heads with him a few times during his tenure in New York (1989-2000). In addition to Leetch and Zubov, Grossman represented a handful of other Rangers players, including forwards Darren Turcotte and Kris King.

“In hindsight, which is better now, I think he was excellent for his players,” Smith said. “I think he really cared. He worked hard for them. He really cared about his craft, and I think he was a really hard worker that took it seriously.”

Although Grossman preferred to stay in the background, he was a firm advocate for the players he represented. With Grossman’s support, Khabibulin did not play in the NHL for the entire 1999-2000 season and most of 2000-01 as a restricted free agent during a contract dispute with the Phoenix Coyotes before being traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Khabibulin went on to help the Lightning win the Stanley Cup for the first time in 2004.

Grossman negotiated a 17-year, $102 million contract for Kovalchuk with the New Jersey Devils in 2010 that was rejected by the NHL for salary cap circumvention. After an arbitrator backed the NHL’s decision, Grossman and the Devils worked out a restructured 15-year, $100 million contract that was eventually approved by the League. Kovalchuk helped the Devils reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2012 before returning to Russia to play in 2013.

“If you could find another agent that that was willing to sit out with a player for almost two full seasons and stand there with them to fight to get that player's value, I'd love to meet them,” Osei-Tutu said. “Nikolai Khabibulin wasn't going to settle for less than his worth, and Jay was right there with him. The Kovalchuk deal, he was always looking for ways to get creative to fit what his clients wanted to accomplish into the framework of the CBA. 

“Even when the League didn't agree and when the League pushed back, he was willing to fight.”

Rinne laughs now remembering how he initially tried to negotiate his final contract with then-Predators GM David Poile on his own in 2018. Grossman tried to talk Rinne out of representing himself, telling him, “It’s not that easy.” 

Rinne realized after two or three meetings with Poile that Grossman was right. Grossman retook the lead and negotiated a two-year, $10 million contract with the Predators.

“I didn’t really know everything that goes into being an agent and me trying to represent myself I was way out of my water,” Rinne said. “That was an eye-opener for me too, to just the work they do and the knowledge they have the preparation that goes into negotiating and everything like that. I think I took it for granted a little bit. So, he was a crucial part of getting that deal done.”

Osei-Tutu said Grossman was an important mentor for him and his partner, Bobby Gauthier, in not only teaching them the business of hockey but also how to identify young prospects and help them become NHL players educated in the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

“So, I owe so much to this man,” Osei-Tutu said. “I don't want to trivialize it and say he was a friend because he was more than a friend. He got upset with me once when I told him, ‘We kind of look at you like a father figure’ because he didn't see himself as somebody that was that much older than us. I am 37.

“He just died at 60, but particularly his last few months, for me, this has felt like losing a parent.”