Toronto hires John Chayka as General Manager
By Nathan Cox – LJI Reporter
Long before John Chayka was making headlines as the youngest general manager in professional sports history, and before his hiring as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chayka was a quiet, intelligent teenager playing junior hockey for the Woodstock Slammers in the Upper River Valley.
Arriving in New Brunswick’s ‘Hospitality Town’ in 2007, Chayka spent two seasons (2007 to 2009) establishing himself as a standout talent on the ice and a gentleman off of it.
“He was the nicest man, and he was a great hockey player. He was a great billet. He had respect for us, and we just thought the world of him,” said Margie Macleod, whose family billeted Chayka.
His teammates recall him as a quiet, yet highly effective player known for his intelligence.
“You can definitely see he is very, very smart. He was very detail-oriented. He was very focused on the next level,” said Kyle Chagnon, a former Slammer who played with Chayka.
“You definitely knew that there was going to be something there in the future for the hockey landscape.”
However, it was Chayka’s meticulous and often experimental approach to his craft that his teammates remember most vividly.
Former teammate Brogan Bailey recalls how Chayka would constantly tinker with his equipment in search of the perfect stick.
“He used to change the curve of his stick frequently. He’d usually end up with something that was completely weird,” Bailey said.
Jason Tatarnic, coach of the Woodstock Slammers, which now plays in the National Collegiate Development Conference (NCDC), remembers Chayka fondly.
“He was a skilled player. If you look at the stats, he put up some numbers while he was here. He was a good player for us. He was an intelligent hockey player,” Tatarnic said.
While his teammates teased him about odd stick curves, they noted that Chayka was talented enough to test new angles and still succeed. This attention to detail extended to his pre-game routines and extra practice time as well.
“He was very, very meticulous and very detailed with a lot of the stuff that he did in his preparation. Anytime we’d get extra ice, he’d always be lining up pucks and stickhandling back and forth through the pucks,” said Chagnon.
The long road trips to away games across Atlantic Canada provided more glimpses into Chayka’s unique habits.
“Chayka always had a yoga mat, and he would roll that thing out across the floor, and he would lie across the floor, and I would lie across the seats,” said Chagnon.
It was during these years in Woodstock that the idea for Stathletes, a hockey analytics company that Chayka would later co-found with his sister Megan and her now-husband Neil Lane, began to take shape. Even as a teenager, he was vocal about the changing landscape of hockey and the role data would play in its future.
“I knew he had wanted to start the analytics company, and he had spoken about it while he was with us at that point, and just about kind of where he saw the game heading,” Bailey said.
Chayka was very successful, leading the Slammers in points in his second and final season with the team and finishing third in the Maritime Hockey League. Following a trade to the Cowichan Valley Capitals in the British Columbia Hockey League, Chayka would end his playing career with the Trenton Golden Hawks of the Ontario Junior Hockey League due to injury.
Despite the injury, Chayka would go on to have an extensive career in hockey, first as an assistant general manager with the Arizona Coyotes (now the Utah Mammoth). He was quickly promoted to general manager of the Coyotes. Chayka led the team for four years before leaving the Coyotes ahead of the 2020 playoffs and was subsequently suspended by league commissioner Gary Bettman for one year.
Chayka now returns to the top of hockey as the general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs after Brad Treliving was fired in March.
Those who knew him in Woodstock follow his career with a sense of collective pride, watching as Chayka reaches the pinnacle of Canadian hockey.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful. Amazing. It’s unbelievable, really. You don’t expect it to happen, and when it does, you go, oh, wow,” said Cindy Young, who also billeted Chayka when he was in Woodstock.
