On any given winter weekend, you’ll find Sydney Daniels at the rink.
That’s been true her whole life. It was true during her playing days as a youngster growing up in Massachusetts, rising through the ranks and earning the attention of the U.S. national under-18 team before landing at Harvard to play NCAA hockey. And it remained true even after she hung up her skates following her one pro season with the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League (since renamed the Premier Hockey Federation), when Daniels returned to her alma mater as an assistant coach.
So her life in hockey and countless hours spent at arenas made for a natural transition when the Boston-based player-turned-coach began working as a scout for the Winnipeg Jets last fall.
“Probably in-season, I’m on the road anywhere from, two, three, four weekends out of the month,” says Daniels of her first season scouting for Winnipeg. “There’s definitely a lot of travel involved, but that’s kind of something I’ve been used to ever since I was a young hockey player. Weekends are these, kind of, sacrificed and sacred little areas of time where, you know, it’s hockey.
“Being able to travel, go watch games Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday … It’s kind of like an ever-changing mosaic of schedules for me.”
The hiring saw Daniels become the first female scout in Jets history, as well as just the second Indigenous woman to hold a scouting position in the NHL, after Brigette Lacquette of the Chicago Blackhawks — who also happens to be a friend. And while Daniels’ first season with Winnipeg saw her network of frequented rinks expand across the east coast college circuit and up through other U.S. hockey hotbeds in Michigan and Minnesota and Wisconsin, it also brought her closer to Leask, Saskatchewan, a day’s drive west of Winnipeg, in the heart of the Mistawasis Nehiyawak First Nation where the Daniels family’s hockey roots run deepest thanks to her grandfather, Noel Daniels.
“It feels really cool to live in Boston and do what I am able to do here. But knowing that the heart of this team and all of my efforts are going towards Winnipeg and the Jets organization, which is so close to my other home, it’s a very, very special experience,” says the 28-year-old.
Hockey is Daniels’ passion — and one she’s made into a career — but for her grandfather, hockey started as a matter of survival. During a decade at St. Michael’s Residential School in the 1940s, his hockey talent offered him “a sense of protection,” Daniels says, and a way through. After he left, and raised a family of his own, the elder Daniels passed the game on to his children — including his son Scott, Sydney’s father, who went on to play 149 games in the NHL.
“Looking at the three-generational aspect of it, hockey started as a way for my grandfather to stay alive, to my father being able to make it to the NHL and have a long career there, and now me, to kind of use hockey not only as a passion — and a shared passion with them — but also as a way for me to get a very good education and to be able to travel the world,” says Daniels. “And now to be able to channel everything I’ve learned from my father and grandfather before … to be able to apply that to a real-life job with the Winnipeg Jets, it’s pretty surreal.”
Noel Daniels died of COVID-19 in December 2020, but Daniels still feels his impact daily.
“I definitely carry my grandfather with me in my mind everywhere I go, because if it weren’t for him and his perseverance and abilities, I probably wouldn’t be here today,” she says. “So, hockey is a sport, but it’s also so much deeper than that for me and my family.”
Soon, Daniels will find herself in another arena — the biggest annual hockey gathering of the year, as scouts, executives and soon-to-be NHLers descend on Nashville for the NHL Draft.
Earlier this week, following a busy hockey season and ahead of the flurry of draft week, Daniels spoke with Sportsnet about her job with the Jets, her passion for helping other Indigenous people find their own way into the game, and how her heritage has shaped her relationship with hockey through those who skated before her.
SPORTSNET: Tell me about your scouting role with the Jets.
SYDNEY DANIELS: I focus mainly on the NCAA, making sure I have a good pulse on those players and being ready to speak on them and make decisions about them.
I feel so grateful for the organization having that trust in me to really do my job well and be able to cover all of the different components that come with overseeing the NCAA. When I’m watching games, knowing players we drafted and being able to give solid updates to our organization on where they are, their development, how they’re playing. Looking at free agents and looking at players who have been drafted but maybe they might become available. So, I’m looking at every player and kind of trying to put them in certain buckets and have them evaluated.
So, really, I’m looking at everyone all the time. It’s pretty fun.
Your home is the Boston area, but Winnipeg is pretty close to your other hockey home, considering your family ties to Saskatchewan and the time you spent there growing up. What has it meant to you to sort of see your two hockey homes come together through this role with the Jets?
When I first went to training camp last year before the start of the season, being in Winnipeg and knowing how close it is to where I’m from in Saskatchewan, it kind of, in a sense, also made that feel like a home, which made that very special to me. My family was able to come to an exhibition game that we had — the first exhibition against the Oilers — and they were all able to drive in and watch the game, and I was able to duck out and see them quickly after the game. Being a part of an organization that’s so close to my Canadian roots, it makes me feel even more prideful to work for them. I’m slowly, slowly but surely converting all of my family and friends into becoming Jets fans.
How much do you draw from your experience as a player and coach when it comes to evaluating players?
I think the simplest answer is, I feel that every experience that I’ve been fortunate to have leading up to working for the Jets has prepared me in some way, shape or form to be as effective as I can in this position. So, being a player and kind of knowing or being able to kind of identify, ‘Okay, is this player that I’m watching a team player? Let me see how they, interact with their team after they made a mistake and it cost them a goal.’ Or being able to identify the different types of players on teams and really being able to dissect that in that sense — being like, ‘Okay, that’s a really good hockey player but he’s not trusted on the power play or the penalty kills.’
So, having that sense of hockey knowledge from playing it, it’s been helpful to kind of better examine and get a better read on players, because I can kind of put myself in their skates, if you will. And of course, coaching — coaching really broadened my viewpoint and really made me see the game in a different light. Not necessarily more X’s and O’s, but more so, you know every player is unique and every player comes from somewhere else and has their own story and has their own goals and has their own ambitions. And so being able to kind of understand that while watching games, I think it’s been helpful, too, and the fine details in which coaching has helped me be able to evaluate. And while I was coaching, I also had to do a lot of recruiting.
I think that everything that I’ve done up to this point has really helped me be the best I can be for the Jets and my position.
Obviously, hockey is such a passion for you as an individual, but it also runs so deep in your family with your dad having played in the NHL and your grandfather introducing him to the game. Can you tell me more about that influence from your grandfather?
We’re very fortunate to have the sport of hockey in our lives, and that’s something that, to this day, keeps us so closely woven and tight together. My grandfather was unfortunately taken away from his home at age seven and he went to the St. Michael’s Residential School. He was there until he was 17. He didn’t get to see his family, he was away from his parents. As it’s being uncovered in the media and people are learning more about the horrific side of residential schools and that part of history, I’ve always known that my grandfather went to something like that and have learned more as I’ve gotten older. My grandfather was taught the sport of ice hockey when he was there. Fred Sasakamoose actually was on his team; I’m pretty sure they were linemates. So, they played ice hockey at the residential school, which then kind of, you know, allowed them to have this sense of protection over them. You know, they were good hockey players and they would go and have circuits and play exhibition games against NHL teams and these really high-end teams. That allowed for him to kind of be able to ensure his safety and ensure that, you know, he would get meals and he was protected from the other horrors of the residential school, like beatings and all of that. So, in that sense, hockey acted kind of as a way for my grandfather to kind of protect himself and save his life, almost.
He left residential school, and not too long after he met my grandmother and they had a big family — there’re five boys and one girl in my dad’s family. … He got them all into the sport of ice hockey. He was Chief of our tribe, Mistawasis Nehiyawak, for a bit of time, and in that time, he not only built the first school but he actually built the first ice hockey rink. So, it allowed kids to have an outlet to play sports — and, of course, for my dad and his brothers and sister to have a rink nearby to play hockey and to have a space for my grandfather to teach them the game.
Losing him was very, very shaking. He was kind of the centre of all of our lives. He was the man with all the wisdom. He was just incredible. Me and my father and my family actually started a hockey school in our Indigenous community to kind of give back to our roots. This will be the sixth year now we run our Daniels Hockey School. That is a very sacred thing for us and has quickly become our passion because we’re doing it all in the route of just trying to empower and uplift and encourage Indigenous youth in ice hockey and use the sport as a vehicle for them to learn about themselves, learn about the people around them, have safe spaces to have fun and be themselves and not have to worry about issues of racism or discrimination or anything like that. So, we’ve been very fortunate that has grown very quickly in the last six years. It’s the way that we keep connected to my grandfather and the true reasons why we love sport.
As you carry on his legacy and passion for hockey, which you also share with your dad, what does it mean to you to know you’re also leading the way for other Indigenous people and women in hockey?
It’s just an honour to be part of the organization because of them believing that I’m the best person for the job and it didn’t matter whether I was male or female, Indigenous or not. Being able to be in the position I am with the Jets knowing that it’s been my hard work and talent to get there. But I also understand the importance of being a visual representation for women, for young girls, for Indigenous youth and non-Indigenous youth who may have dreams of being a part of the NHL one day. I really feel fortunate to be that visual representation.
You know, it’s funny sometimes because when I have these interviews, it really reminds me again of what my position truly means on both the smaller scale and larger scale. But at the end of the day, I just feel very fortunate for the Jets believing in me and my ability and also celebrating it, too.