Ray Shero, the son of a Hockey Hall of Fame coach who grew up to become a Stanley Cup-winning general manager, has died, the NHL announced Wednesday. He was 62.
Shero spent three decades working in NHL front offices, including serving as GM of the New Jersey Devils and Pittsburgh Penguins, where he was the architect of the first championship team of the Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin era in 2009.
He was the second Shero to have his name etched into the Stanley Cup, following his father Fred.
“Whenever we ran into each other at a rink when he was scouting, it was clear he loved what he was doing and I always marveled at his infectious enthusiasm,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in the announcement. “The entire National Hockey League family mourns his passing and sends our deepest condolences to the Shero family and Ray’s many friends throughout the hockey world.”
Born in St. Paul, Minn., on July 28, 1962, Shero came by his early love of the game honestly.
His father was an innovator who became the first NHL head coach to hire an assistant and introduced the practice of holding a morning skate before games. Fred also encouraged his boys to come with him to practices, which Ray did regularly. He spent his formative years around the Philadelphia Flyers teams his father coached to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1974 and 1975, getting to know Terry Crisp, Pat Quinn and Jacques Plante — all Flyers assistant coaches — during that period.
A hockey career beckoned.
Shero went on to play four years at St. Lawrence University, serving as team captain for two of them, but figured his future would be forged off the ice even after being selected by the Los Angeles Kings in the 11th round of the 1982 draft.
“I don’t think I ever said, ‘Gee, I think I want to do something different,’” Shero told ESPN in 2013, when his father was posthumously inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the builder’s category.
Shero never pursued a career in professional hockey. Instead, he worked as a hockey agent for seven years after graduating from St. Lawrence before making the jump to management with the Ottawa Senators in 1993. He was hired as an assistant GM by former teammate Randy Sexton, the Sens GM, and tasked with overseeing their minor-league system.
Shero worked in Ottawa until 1998, when he became assistant GM of the expansion Nashville Predators. He spent eight seasons in Nashville under Hall of Fame GM David Poile. That set Shero up to land the Penguins GM job in 2006.
When Shero arrived in Pittsburgh, the Penguins hadn’t qualified for the playoffs in five years. However, they’d already drafted Crosby, Malkin, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury and would take Jordan Staal with the No. 2 pick shortly after he was hired.
That young core quickly transformed the franchise into a championship contender and was buoyed by Shero’s bold trade for Marian Hossa at the 2008 trade deadline. Pittsburgh reached the Stanley Cup Final that year, losing in six games to the Detroit Red Wings, before returning to beat the Red Wings in Game 7 the following spring with the help of some key acquisitions made by the GM, most notable among them forwards Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin.
Shero remained with the Penguins through the 2014 playoffs, when the team lost to the New York Rangers in the second round, marking its fifth straight season being eliminated by a lower-seeded opponent.
His next job came in New Jersey, where he succeeded Lou Lamoriello as GM and spent five seasons overseeing a retooling period for the Devils. The high-water mark was a surprise playoff appearance in 2018, driven mainly by a superlative season from Taylor Hall, who won the Hart Trophy a year after being acquired by Shero in a trade with the Edmonton Oilers.
Many key players who remain in New Jersey were added during his tenure, including Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt.
Shero was hired by Guerin, now the Minnesota Wild GM, as a senior adviser in 2021 and remained in that position until his death.
Well-known and extremely well-liked throughout the hockey industry, Shero was also part of building numerous national teams for USA Hockey.
(Photo: Brandon McCauley / NHLI via Getty Images)