Josh Lavallee/NHLI via Getty Images/Andrew Mordzynski/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images/Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports
NHL executives Eric Tulsky and Sunny Mehta
The NHL spent decades treating analytics people like the weird cousin who brought a spreadsheet to Thanksgiving, and now one of them has a Stanley Cup while another is running the New Jersey Devils. Eric Tulsky, a former hockey blogger and nanotechnologist, built the Carolina Hurricanes into the 2026 champions, while Sunny Mehta, a former professional poker player, took over New Jersey this spring after helping Florida win back-to-back Cups.
The NHL has had analytics departments for years, but this feels different. The guys who once would have been hired to quietly email charts to a traditional hockey executive are becoming the traditional hockey executives.
Hockey’s Weirdest Résumés Suddenly Look Pretty Smart
Tulsky’s path still sounds like somebody clicked “randomize career” on a video game.
He studied chemistry and physics at Harvard, earned a chemistry Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley, worked in biotechnology and nanotechnology, accumulated more than two dozen patents and started writing hockey analysis online because apparently having one extremely difficult career was not enough.
BroBible covered his wild résumé when Carolina promoted him to general manager in 2024. Two years later, the experiment has a Stanley Cup attached to it.
Carolina won the 2026 title after Tulsky spent roughly 17 months aggressively reshaping the roster. His moves included taking a huge swing on Mikko Rantanen, recognizing when the fit was not working, flipping him for Logan Stankoven and draft capital, then using one of those assets in the deal for K’Andre Miller. He also added Nikolaj Ehlers and Taylor Hall.
That is Moneyball with considerably more violence and fewer Oakland A’s montages.
Mehta’s background may somehow be even stranger.
The Devils hired him as general manager in April after he spent six seasons in Florida’s front office, including the Panthers’ Stanley Cup championships in 2024 and 2025. Before hockey management became his full-time life, Mehta played high-stakes poker professionally, worked as a derivatives trader and co-authored poker strategy books.
He also helped establish the NHL’s first full-time analytics department when New Jersey hired him as director of hockey analytics in 2014.
So, yes, the guy now deciding whether to trade your favorite Devil once made his living deciding whether the man across a poker table was bluffing.
The NHL’s ‘Analytics Guy’ Is Becoming The Guy In Charge
Mehta does not even describe his philosophy as blindly obeying numbers.
He has said analytics matter because they improve decision-making under uncertainty, something he learned at poker tables, on trading floors and inside hockey front offices. His preferred poker style is “tight and aggressive,” which is also an excellent description of how fans want their general manager to behave until he trades somebody they like.
That is why Tulsky’s championship matters beyond Carolina.
Analytics in hockey are no longer fighting merely to prove that shot quality or zone entries contain useful information. One of the sport’s most unconventional executives has now reached the top of the mountain, while another executive from the same analytical family tree has been handed control of a franchise with Stanley Cup expectations.
None of this means every NHL team will fire its former player executives and start recruiting chemists from Silicon Valley or card counters from Vegas.
Hockey still requires scouting, relationships, contract negotiation, player development and the inconvenient fact that human beings occasionally ruin perfect models.
But the stereotype is getting harder to defend.
The old hockey front office was built around decades inside the game.
The new version might require a Ph.D., a poker face and a very good spreadsheet.