For NHL’s new head honcho, position is dream come true

david.frank@exhibitAnews.com

Things are so good with local sports right now that even Boston lawyers are cashing in on the karma.

Take Paul Kelly, for example.

When the white-collar criminal lawyer answered his phone last June, little did he know that by the end of the conversation, he would be on his way to landing one of the most powerful positions in professional sports.

Dave Poulin — a former National Hockey League forward — was on the line offering an opportunity most fantasy-sports fanatics would jump at, not to mention the fact that it came with a five-year contract worth an estimated $2 million annually.

Poulin, it turns out, was working for a company in Chicago hired to find a new executive director for the NHL Players Association. “He asked if I’d like to be considered, and I said sure,” Kelly recalls. “The whole thing came out of nowhere.”

It’s the “out-of-nowhere” element that makes this story so great, especially when you consider the fact that Kelly was a virtual unknown in the world of sports.

“I had a good thing going in Boston,” Kelly says, “and if someone had offered me a judgeship or almost any other job, I would have said no. But this was one I had to take. I’ll miss being a trial lawyer, but I’ve been around hockey since I was 6 years old; this was a dream job for me.”

Selected from a pool of 500 candidates, Kelly, 52, replaces Ted Saskin, who left the position in May amid allegations he was secretly monitoring his players’ e-mails.

But how did the Newton native — who once prosecuted the Charlestown “Code of Silence” murder cases and recently defended pop-star Howie Day after his Logan Airport arrest — finally get the gig?

“It boiled down to whether they wanted someone with a strong marketing or legal background, and for whatever reason I was the lucky guy,” he says. “I told them one of the things we learn as trial lawyers is if you don’t have expertise in an area, you go out and get the best people you can. While I’m not a marketing guy, I can tell you this: The [NHLPA] will have a presence under me they don’t currently have.”

Ironically, Kelly’s understanding of his new job began back when he was a federal prosecutor who indicted one of his now-predecessors, Alan Eagleson, on fraud and embezzlement charges.

“Eagleson was the first executive director of the players’ association, and I put him in prison,” Kelly notes. “Through that case, people in the league got to know who I was. But if someone had told me back then I would someday be in Eagleson’s chair, I would have laughed and said, ‘No way.’”

The Eagleson case would not be Kelly’s only dealing with the NHL. He also represented Marty McSorley, the Boston Bruin convicted of beating an opposing player with his stick.

While those experiences ultimately helped him land the job, Kelly, who today heads up a labor union consisting of more than 700 players, knows that what lies ahead will be no piece of cake.

On his plate is the almost insurmountable task of reviving a sport still suffering from the after-effects of a 2004 labor strike, fan apathy, the possibility of another work stoppage and a brutal television contract that airs games on a difficult-to-find network.

“We have a lot to do, but I don’t feel overwhelmed,” he says. “Being a trial lawyer is about managing crisis and dealing with what might otherwise seem like a difficult situation. I’m excited to get going.”

As he gets going, here’s hoping that Kelly can keep the karma alive.