The man who brings the Canes parties!

When you're here, and you can have as much to offer as the Carolina Hurricanes have to offer, and that's why guys like Steve Mayer come to town, who is the NHL's Chief Content Officer, but I like to call him their Chief Party Thrower, and he joins us on the Adam Gold Show. You're back, which must mean that we have parties coming possibly.

First of all, how are you Adam? And second of all, I love it here, and you know, it's wild, and we were talking about this last night. You know, we at the league, especially this time of the year, we have no idea where we're going to spend May and June. Right.

None. Yeah, and you know, it could be anywhere, and you know, this is not a bad place to be if I'm going to be spending a lot of time here in May and June. Our team loves it here. You know, the Kings folks are so great to work with, and yeah, we're back. We're in planning mode right now, but we're ready to put some things into action if we have to in a few weeks.

Yeah, it really would be just about two and a half weeks away. Steve Mayer, the NHL Chief Content Officer, I call him the Chief Party Thrower of the league. This is a scouting mission for you about what may happen next, because the league runs the Stanley Cup Finals. So what does that entail for you? What are you here to do? Who are you here to meet with?

What are you looking at? So we work, and that's great that you pointed that out. You know, we, for the final, you know, run the show, but yet we work really hand in hand with the team. And for fans out there, you know, we're not here to upset the apple cart, but the apple cart, you know, has a lot more apples on it. You know, when we hit the final, you know, media from all over the world comes to our final. And, you know, and there's just so much more attention. So what we're here to do is to look at the arena, look at, you know, everything that goes on around the game as well. And we just are here to supersize it. You were just here a few months ago for the outdoor game. So what do you take away from that that applies here? Or is because that is a completely different animal on a larger, you know, outdoor festival scale?

Does nothing apply from February to May to May or June? No, we live and we learn a lot for whenever we do an event. I start with your fan base.

Wow. I mean, talk about in love with hockey and, you know, who was I ever for even a half a second years and years ago, doubt that an outdoor game could happen successfully in this market, man, it was incredible. It was a great day for us. And, you know, to see that that crowd and, you know, and just, you know, hear the energy. Yeah, this is a place that loves hockey. You know, we've now been here for a little over 24 hours.

And I you can't go anywhere. I mean, everybody's talking about the Carolina hurricane. And everybody, you know, is really into this. And the fan culture here of tailgating, which we've always known, you know, it's different, it's unique, it's, it's like no other place. And we're gonna have to feed into that.

That's, that's awesome. And, you know, there's things that we we saw from that outdoor game that, you know, we think we might be able to apply here. We love Carter Finley.

I mean, we're gonna look at it today. Carter Finley could be the home for a concert, some of our activations. You know, we're, we're, you know, we're just kind of thinking big and confidently thinking big, because we know the fan base here loves to respond to, you know, big events.

Yeah. And we also know that, you know, there's a lot of people here that want to be a part of the Stanley Cup final. And in this case, only, you know, a little less than 20,000 can go to the game. So how do we give the Stanley Cup final experience to fans who might not even have a ticket, watch parties and all the things that, you know, you think are just kind of normal, but here, we think they'll go to another level. So, yeah, we learned a lot. We had an amazing experience here. And we're really happy to be back.

But, you know, we do take away no matter what we do from those experiences. Steve Mayer, before I let you go, Chief Content Officer of the NHL, Chief Party Thrower is the better way to talk about his job. Also Executive Producer of Quest for the Stanley Cup. I know the second episode will drop on ESPN Plus on Friday, tomorrow.

I know there's a re-air Sunday, I think five o'clock tomorrow on ESPN Plus, Sunday at 11 a.m. on ESPN2. How much behind the scenes do you have here so far? So, you know, this has been a team, you know, you guys have been in the Quest for the Stanley Cup before. And, you know, I'm so cooperative, you know, in these shows. And, you know, we love doing them. We love giving fans that peek behind the curtain. And, you know, in a time where, wow, you know, it's intense for the players. That goal of winning the Stanley Cup is everything, you know, to let us into your locker rooms, to your home, to drive to, you know, the arena with a player to do things that, you know, you don't normally see in other sports. You know, we always thank the teams and thank the players profusely because it makes such great, compelling content.

Yeah. And the Carolina Hurricanes are awesome to work with. You know, Mike Sunheim and Coach Brinmore. I mean, you'll see in this episode coming up how we begin the episode and it features your coach. And it's really an inside look into him and, you know, and for him to allow us to get that peek and to, you know, to feature him and the team.

You know, it's great stuff. The first episode, you know, we had a feature on Game 4, your series against the Devils. That was a big win for you guys in New Jersey, you know, and, you know, that was mostly focused on ice. But then you saw the ovation in the locker room. You saw that immediately.

Coach Brinmore immediately started looking at, you know, the videotape and really analyzing what was done right and wrong. You know, those are peeks into a world that most fans don't get to see. And your team allows us that access. And that's special. And this is a really good series of people haven't seen it. We've been doing it for years. But if people haven't seen it, it's awesome. You know, and I put it up there with any of the all access shows in any sport. And yeah, we're really proud of it.

And episode two is coming up. And we'll take it all the way through to the parade, wherever that parade happens to be. All right. Well, we'll see you back here for that. See, that's the thing.

It could be us. Thanks to Steve Mayer from the NHL Chief Content Officer. And again, he puts on the big party. They were across the street, putting on the stadium series game. And I know there were traffic issues and some other issues here and there. But the NHL does an incredible job with big events. Steve's a big part of that. But Quest for the Stanley Cup is a very, very cool look. Look, I think we've been kind of fortunate here that as a whole, the Hurricanes do an incredible job with social media, providing fans with some, you know, inside access view of some of the little things. The Brenda Moore speeches in the locker room, which are very brief, after games, some of those moments, I think the Hurricanes do incredibly well. Another thing that I think will be dynamite today, and I'm about to go outside and just kind of drink some of it in, the atmosphere at PNC Arena in the parking lots, in the parking lots, which I'm guessing that in the next hour will really start heating up. This is, I mean, in some ways, this is Caniac's time to shine, too. It's the team on the ice that will do the job. But all of the fans, it's a great fan base. And it's why people like me have always had confidence that this would work. Even after the tough times, always had the confidence that it would be fine. Just needed the right coach, right? Rod Brenda Moore, five straight years, second time into the Conference Finals.