About Veritas Hockey
About Veritas
Veritas Hockey is devoted to advancing the hockey careers of players dedicated to fulfilling their potential. We act as advisors for amateur players and agents for professionals. We have a network of contacts in amateur and professional hockey that is second to none, and can relate to our clients exactly what college, junior and professional scouts are saying about them.
Services for amateur players include advice and counsel regarding career choices in AAA, junior and college programs, development opportunities, and preparing for the NHL Draft. We have a system for identifying the right college programs to target, tailored for the individual player’s talents and needs, and how best to approach the process with those programs. We know the college coaches personally, and their styles and demands. We also help players target schools based on their academic record and interests, as well as culture, location and courses of study.
For professional players, Tom Lynn has negotiated hundreds of professional hockey contracts, from both the team and player side, and worked on the massive NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement as an attorney before coming to Minnesota. As a former NHL Assistant General Manager and AHL GM, he has personal relationships with every General Manager and Assistant GM in those Leagues, and knows most of the coaches personally. He has been responsible for player development for an NHL team, has run a pro scouting staff, and been a leader in contract analysis and negotiation in the NHL sphere for over a decade. There is not another agent in the business that can approach the totality of that insight and experience.
Veritas Hockey is also committed to the development of their players, both on and off the ice. We run development camps, analyze players’ games, and recommend courses of action to prepare for and reach their next level, wherever the player is in the course of his career.
Veritas Hockey is devoted to advancing the hockey careers of players dedicated to fulfilling their potential. We act as advisors for amateur players and agents for professionals. We have a network of contacts in amateur and professional hockey that is second to none, and can relate to our clients exactly what college, junior and professional scouts are saying about them.
We are an intentionally smaller, boutique firm that forges a personal relationship with clients and their families that the large corporate agencies simply cannot provide.
We don’t utilize stringers, so you’ll find us at the rink, watching our clients perform and interacting with coaches, scouts, and team personnel.
VeritasHockey knows how NHL teams scout, draft, and develop talent, as Tom Lynn did it for nine years in his role running the Hockey Operations for an NHL team and as an AHL General Manager. His experience in the GM’s box and at the draft table allows him to provide clients with unique insight into the world of professional hockey.
WHAT WE DO
- Negotiate professional player contracts.
- Procure professional opportunities for players worldwide.
- Guide the process of selecting wealth and money management.
- Explain, educate and guide clients through the rules and process of junior hockey, cross-border agreements, the college and major junior processes, the NHL Draft, and professional free agency.
- Coaching and insight into how a client may improve his game to make and stay in the NHL, how NHL scouts will see him, and specific coaches and programs to undertake to reach these goals.
- A process of goal setting, strategy and accountability that is taken from the lives of successful NHL players, applied to wherever a client is at the current stage of his career.
Tom Lynn
Tom Lynn is a principal of Veritas Hockey and an NHLPA Certified Agent, an agency providing representation to current and prospective professional hockey players worldwide. Mr. Lynn’s experience in participating in the selection and development of NHL prospects, managing an NHL development team, and negotiating hundreds of professional contracts is unparalleled among player representatives. He has assisted many players in the college recruitment process, from drawing interest to weighing scholarship opportunities, and guided many players with major junior opportunities through the complex rules and process.
Mr. Lynn has long been an integral part of the development process for amateur players, both on and off the ice. He has a vast network of relationships from his diverse experience in hockey, including high school and junior coaches, skating and skill instructors, college coaches, professional coaches, medical specialists in hockey-specific fields, and even team owners and league executives.
Before undertaking the representation of players, his career included stints as the Assistant General Manager of the Minnesota Wild (2000 to 2009), the General Manager of the Houston Aeros of the American Hockey League (2001 to 2009), representing (as an attorney) the NBA, NHL and other professional sports entities (1994 to 1999), and teaching Sports Law at St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis. He has also written a definitive book on the building and running of an NHL team; “How to Build An NHL Franchise From Scratch: The First Era of the Minnesota Wild,” and has occasionally written for The Hockey News over his career. Prior to joining the Wild, Mr. Lynn represented the NHL and other sports entities as an attorney in New York City.
Mr. Lynn has deep experience in how NHL teams work, and how they view and develop players. During his time with the Wild, he sat at an NHL draft table for nine years, executed dozens of player trades, negotiated hundreds of player contracts, ran a pro scouting staff, and managed the AHL Houston Aeros to a Calder Cup championship and to the Western Conference Finals three times in eight seasons. He has developed extensive contacts along the way in the hockey media and among league and team executives in Junior A, Major Junior, the NCAA, the ECHL, Europe, the American Hockey League and the NHL.
As an advisor and agent, Tom Lynn has assisted players through major junior, American junior leagues, the college scouting and recruitment process, placement as free agents with NHL teams, placement with European teams as free agents, and applied his long legal experience and NHL tenure in negotiating his players’ contracts. Mr. Lynn is among the most respected contract negotiators in the business of hockey, as he changed the “Joe Thornton Model” of NHL Rookie contracts to the “Koivu Model” in 2004-05, negotiated the largest 2-year contract in NHL history for Artemi Panarin in 2016, and procured a “one-way” contract for defenseman Jimmy Schuldt after only one NHL career game played.
After all of those years of drafting, developing (and trading) players for an NHL organization, Mr. Lynn knows exactly what NHL scouts are looking for from his clients. He is known and respected throughout the amateur and professional hockey worlds, in North America and Europe. His reputation is matched only by his dedication to his clients’ interests.
Jamie Dial
Jamie Dial is an experienced sports and civil litigation attorney based in Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated cum laude from Yale University and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Following a judicial clerkship in his home state of New Jersey, he joined the Princeton office of a Global Top 30 law firm, working on a broad variety of cases, first as an associate, then as a partner. Specializing in complex commercial litigation in both state and federal courts, his practice also included substantial sports law, product liability, defamation, trade secrets, pharmaceutical, intellectual property, bankruptcy, securities, and employment matters. He has tried cases and litigated appeals in numerous districts throughout the United States, as well as handled significant sports and civil arbitrations, including extensive player salary arbitration experience.
He served as the primary arbitration counsel for the Minnesota Wild, representing the club in numerous salary and injury arbitration matters and securing the best club-side salary arbitration decision on multiple occasions.
Jamie works with professional and amateur clients and is a member of the Professional Hockey Players’ Association Agent Program. In the community, he serves as the Co-President of the Yale Club of Princeton, a board member of the Friends of Yale Rugby, and a member of the Supreme Court of New Jersey’s District Fee Arbitration Committee.
Kyle Kosior
Kyle Kosior brings over a decade of experience to his role with Veritas Hockey, where he is responsible for scouting amateur players, assisting in their development, education, career choices and opportunities while also analyzing contract comparables and undertaking advanced statistical analyses of professional players.
Kyle has previously worked with the United States Hockey League front office, The Hockey Academy at the Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks, ND and the Manitoba Moose. He has a wide network of contacts in junior hockey (Junior A and Major Junior, as well as AAA) in both the US and Canada and has experience in placing players with programs on both sides of the border.
Kyle has also successfully completed numerous international player transfers and assisted families in navigating the rules imposed by USA Hockey and Hockey Canada as well as the various junior leagues.
In addition to the these duties, Kyle also helps to monitor the academic progress of clients wishing to pursue an NCAA career and keeps a close eye on off-ice activities to help clients maintain compliance with NCAA standards, while providing strategic advice to those deciding between Major Junior and the NCAA.
Kyle helped to found Illegal Curve.com and still contributes to the website and radio show from time-to-time. He also teaches in the Sports Business program at the University of North Dakota and is a licensed mediator.
In his spare time, Kyle serves as a consultant on arena design projects in the US and Canada and helps coach in the local youth hockey organization.
Kyle lives in North Dakota with his wife Amanda and sons, Archie and Charlie.
Development
Veritas Hockey believes strongly in providing quality instruction to our players in order to develop the skills they need to succeed now and in the future. There are three parts to our approach to development for our clients:
- Evaluation – with expertise from decades of work in all sides of the sport and business of hockey, we inform our clients what is strong and weak in their game, what the “conventional wisdom” of their game from the scouts is, and what they need off-ice to round out their development plan.
- Knowledge – this encompasses what you need to know, on-ice and off, to optimize your hockey career potential. We give you resources in nutrition, hockey skills, strength & conditioning, rules and regulations of the various levels of hockey, academic requirements and how to meet them, and personal advice on the player’s particular challenges, as well as referrals to experts in their fields for individualized instruction. In addition, for older clients we help them with life’s stages and challenges to help them with a strategy for wealth management and planning, daily life, off-season plans and individual counsel on the decisions and challenges they face as professional hockey players.
- On-Ice Development – we hold various camps, tournaments and seminars where we can directly coach our players on things they need to learn and what they should expect at the next level for their path. As part of this endeavor, Veritas Hockey has hosted development camps and put together tournaments and tourney teams during the off-season and brings in NHL, junior and AHL staff to work with players on skill development. As part of this process, we focus on not only on-ice skills, but also rely heavily on video instruction and dry land training. Veritas Hockey development camps also feature a lecture series on topics ranging from financial management to nutrition and social and traditional media training. We believe it is important for our players to be as good off the ice as they are on the ice.
Development Camp
ARTICLE ON NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND HOCKEY
VERITAS FACEBOOK PAGE
How to Choose an Agent or Advisor
When retaining the person who will use their judgment, experience, education and expertise to guide you through the most important decisions of your career, make sure to consider the following:
- Is this agent or advisor certified by the National Hockey League Players Association? By operation of U.S. law, any person who purports to negotiate conditions of terms of employment for a player with a National Hockey League team MUST be certified by the NHLPA (the players’ union). You can check for the agent’s name at www.nhlpa.com, scroll to the bottom of the page for a “Certified Player Agents.”
- Make sure your agent or advisor is an attorney! The NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement is over 500 pages long! And it is written in dense legalese. The Canadian Hockey League’s rules and player agreements are also densely written. The NCAA rulebook is enormous. The IIHF rules and federation agreements that apply to a player’s transfer from one country to another are a confusing maze. You would not have an insurance agent operate on your knee – so make sure you have an attorney to know, explain and enforce your rights!
GOLDEN KNIGHTS, KRAKEN USE TOM LYNN’S BOOK AS A BLUEPRINT
Tom Lynn has been a respected mind in the NHL for decades, having served as an attorney for the League office and for a team, General Manager of an American Hockey League champion, and then Assistant General Manager and General Manager of the Minnesota Wild. So much so, that when he wrote a book about his experience in building a successful NHL team, it was used as a blueprint by the Vegas Golden Knights, and then the Seattle Kraken, to build their respective organizations.
https://theathletic.com/1904681/2020/07/06/nhl-reading-room-31-teams-31-book-recommendations
AN ETHICAL APPROACH IS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL OF OUR WORK
Agents have a reputation of putting their needs first, and the client’s second (or third, or fourth). Too many agents have been caught taking money on the side, or putting their clients into deals where the agent receives an undisclosed benefit.
At Veritas Hockey, we live 3 principles that guide our client relationship and our client’s decisions — Informed, Free and Unconflicted. We inform our clients of all offers, details, rules and communications to allow him to make a free decision based on his own perceptions, not forced by his agent, and unconflicted by his agent’s own interests in the matter or money at hand.
- The Only NHLPA Certified Agent Also To Serve As An NHL General Manager
- The Only NHLPA Certified Agent To Work On the Collective Bargaining Agreement as an Attorney for the League
- We bring actual experience in over 300 player contract negotiations and countless salary arbitrations and other player grievances in support of our clients
