An Email Interview with Online Hockey Personality for Snapback Sports - Tim Kalinowski

There are a lot of great hockey content creators out there.

I want to introduce you all to one in this piece. His name is Tim Kalinowski.

Kalinowski is an on-air talent and personality for Snapback Sports. Kalinowski attended several memorable hockey games this season and, in typical creator fashion, shared them with hockey and sports fans through his various social feeds.

Tim was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to tell us how he got into hockey growing up, when he knew he wanted to be in sports media, what it was like to attend incredible hockey games this season, and more. I hope you folks enjoy this!

PH: Growing up, how did you get into hockey?
TK: I was born in Vail, CO, where we lived for three years before moving to Massachusetts, which was
during that great Avalanche run in the early 2000s. My dad, despite never playing hockey, just
really loved the sport.

He had season tickets to the Aves, and my parents were the kind of people who brought their infant to hockey games. (Classic hockey parents). Surprisingly, I was very well behaved for that environment, so they figured I enjoyed it.

They famously brought me to the opening night of the Pepsi Center in 1999 when I was just a year old. Other than that, I believe the first thing my dad bought after I was born was a mini hockey net and stick, so I had a stick in my hands from the day I was born.

I am pretty sure he had me in skates before I learned to walk. He would hold me and drag my feet along the ice as he went skating on the pond or at frozen rinks in parks, and whatnot.

Because of all that, I do not remember getting “into” hockey because I was engulfed in it since the moment I was born, hahaha!

PH: Growing up, who was your favorite team (s) and player (s)? How about now?
TK: Because of the Colorado thing, I was first an Avalanche fan. My first word was “Joe Sakic.
(and that is not a lie)”.

When we moved to Massachusetts, I was about three years old, so it was all Boston Bruins. With that said, there was a time around high school when I became obsessed with wanting to be a sports media guy.

I still had the dream of taking my hockey career as far as I could. I also knew at one point I would need another skillset career-wise.

My uncle, Mike Lynch, was a famous sportscaster in Boston, so starting at a young age, he would take me to work with him a few times a year. This entailed things like being on the field/court or holding the microphone in scrums in the Bruins’ dressing room after games.

I have held the microphone for Tom Brady, Zdeno Chara, and David Ortiz, among others. As such, because I was around the media and journalism industry, I almost organically started to become more of a neutral fan.

The media has changed now to where more media people express their fandom, but when I was younger, I thought it would be a major red flag if one day people dug up tweets and saw that I was a Bruins fan or Red Sox fan, etc.

I beat it out of myself to be a more neutral fan. I also think having seen all of my Boston teams win championships in my lifetime has helped that, but I pretty quickly got to a point where I am not torn up in any way if Boston teams win or lose. I used to get teased in high school for saying “I am a fan of the game” as I was stirring the pot at times with my Masshole friends.

Overall, my life is far more enjoyable when the Boston teams are good because that means the people close to me are more interested, but otherwise as you see in my content one night I am in a Leafs jersey, the next I am in a Panthers jersey and people say “Aren’t you a Bruins fan?”

To be honest, I am not a Bruins fan anymore.

PH: As a hockey player, you played some junior hockey and even played club hockey at
Syracuse University. What were those experiences like?
TK: By the time I graduated high school and was doing a post-grad year at Phillips Exeter, I had
some DIII schools who were interested in me, and that was the route I was planning to go. Once I was playing juniors, however, and the decision on where to go to school was getting closer, I started to have some doubts about whether I wanted to go to a smaller college, which is obviously what a lot of DIII hockey schools are.

If I was not going to play in the NHL, why would I go to a school I did not want to go to outside of hockey? The Syracuse Club hockey team reached out to me and was pretty much recruiting me, and my head is telling me that I am not going to play club hockey, as I am better than that.

I ended up putting on one of their games and quickly realized this was not what I thought it was. You see, a lot of people do not understand that the top 25 or so teams in club hockey are damn good.

Everyone is fast, big, and played junior hockey. It is a whole batch of players who were making similar decisions that I was.

And to top it off, by going to Syracuse, I would have the opportunity to follow my sports media dream by going to the Newhouse School there. It was a perfect match, and funny enough, hockey-wise, I scored two goals in my first game as a freshman and then was a scratch three weeks later for two months.

It was quite the reality check of how good club hockey can be. It is something I believe in in terms of promoting the sport.

In the summer, I used to skate with a lot of my friends who played DI, and I found it so flattering how many of them were just as interested in how my season was going as they were about how someone who was playing at BU was doing. The fact that they did not see me as an inferior player made me feel proud.

People look down on club hockey mostly because they do not understand it. The higher-level teams like Syracuse are not glorified beer league squads.

We have a paid coaching staff. We traveled the country, we missed out on every fun college weekend and party for five months of the year, and we practiced and trained every day.

It is honestly a fight I am sick of having because people just don’t get it.

PH: At what point did you realize that you wanted to work in the media side of sports?
TK: I probably answered a lot of this in the second question, but the experiences I had with my uncle. I am one of those people who, since I was in high school, have read the paper every day.

I love sports coverage probably more than I like sports. From the second I wake up to when I go to bed,
Boston sports radio is playing in my headphones, which is something that I thought was normal, but upon meeting other human beings, I realized that I might have a sports sickness, haha!

An example would be my love with the Toronto Maple Leafs. I talk a lot about the Toronto Maple Leafs to the point where people think I am a fan when I am not.

I am a fan of the story, always having the hype and never getting it done in what is usually in horrific fashion. I listen to Toronto radio every day, and I read every article.

When they lose a big game, it is like I am refreshing Twitter all night because I am waiting to hear the postgame quotes, and I am salivating reading the Monday morning quarterbacking and endless postmortem.

But just to get back to my career, I almost get embarrassed when people ask what I do
because the reality is I make TikToks and am technically a content creator (a title I hate). That is because I think there is a natural undertone of trying to be an influencer or thinking you are so important that you videotape yourself.

The reality is this is not what I wanted to do. If I could have it my way, I would be a columnist for the Boston Globe and I would travel to morning skates, be on a beat, and I would just write my thoughts and opinions on the team/game.

That is just not how it works anymore. At the advice of one of my college friends, he said to me, “Why don’t you just make a TikTok and just say into the camera what you would want to write about”, which is what I did.

It is what helps me sleep at night knowing sure, I may be on TikTok, but I am doing it through the lens of an old newspaper columnist.

PH: How did you become an NHL betting analyst over at the Action Network? What was it like to make hockey content for them?
TK: Action Network was my first real job. I started as an intern the summer going into my senior year of college and I ended up being there for three years.

I was working about 30 hours a week for them while I was in college. I loved it because I was a fan of Action before I started working there.

I have been betting pretty much every day since I was 16, so I have a pretty big betting background, which before the massive legalisation surge was a big feather in my cap to have as an intern.

I was not even working on anything really hockey related until after being there for two years. I was sent to work an event with Michael Leboff, Action’s lead NHL guy at the time.

We had never crossed paths at work (we were fully remote by then) and we got into a conversation about the Maple Leafs and he could not believe how much I knew about hockey and that I bet on it on a regular basis.

It was one of those “did we just become best friends?” moments. A day later, he said, “Hey, do you want to join me and Nick Martin on our NHL betting pod?”

I joined the pod, which we did three times a week for over a year. It was probably the most enjoyable thing I have done in my career because I loved working with Mike and Nick so much.

It also helped me improve as a hockey bettor because I was not very good until I began doing the show. I
had the right understanding, but I needed help with my process.

I owe them a lot for how much they taught me. The three of us are still very tight even though we are all in different places now.

PH: Tell us about how you got a gig with Snapback Sports.
TK: Snapback was started by Jack Settleman, who is pretty big in the sports influencer world. He used to work at Action, but we missed each other.

Three years ago, I was in Phoenix doing some work with NASCAR at their championship race, and Jack ended up being in my little group. I had no idea who he was at the time, but we talked for a little bit, and we went to dinner one of the nights we were there, but that was it.

I had not spoken to him for a while, and then all of a sudden last spring (about three years after that dinner), he texted me and said he wanted me to come work for him at Snapback. I was very nervous to make the move because I do not like change.

It was probably one of the best decisions of my entire life. In just one year at Snapback, I have been to Ireland, Canada, the CFB National Championship, Super Bowl Radio Row, the Stanley Cup Final, and a million other things in between.

I could not be happier.

PH: In terms of hockey, what are you trying to do at Snapback Sports?
TK: Interestingly enough, when I first joined Snapback, I kinda assumed I was going to have to put
my hockey content on the back burner for a little. Snapback is still a small company, and as we see in the sports world, football takes up most of the airtime and resources, but I am a huge football fan, so I was willing to accept that compromise in the beginning.

When the 4 Nations Face-Off happened, everything changed. On the Snapback sports YouTube channel we travel the world going to sporting events to try to find “the greatest sports experience in the world.”

A majority of our experiences have been dominated by football, especially college football. However, during the football offseason, Snapback tries its best to do other experiences like NASCAR, baseball, basketball, etc.

They are all fun, but it is difficult to pull off compared to the cadence and consistency of the football season. So, as football was winding down this season, it was around December, and we were building our winter/spring schedule for events outside of football, which is when I suggested the 4 Nations Face-Off.

As a hockey guy, I was pretty pumped for it, but like a lot of us, I did not know what to expect. This was also my first pitch to Snapback that was not football related, so it was a bit of a gamble on my end to convince my bosses at Snapback, who are hockey casuals, that this was gonna be at the very least a noteworthy event.

Long story short, I wanted to go to that Saturday night USA-Canada game in Montreal, but we were working on a deal with the NHL, and they said they had already filled their allotments of tickets/passes. They offered us championship access instead, which I was very disappointed by because it was not guaranteed to be USA-Canada.

Those famous first 15 seconds happened in Montreal and watching from home, I knew the anticipation for the potential championship was going to be just as insane. And with that, the 4 Nations Face-Off had the full attention of Snapback and everyone else in the sports world.

I went from what felt like going out on a limb, asking my bosses to send me to this thing and all of a sudden, it was like not only are we sending you, but your content better deliver because this is the hottest ticket in town now.

PH: What was it like to experience the 4 Nations Face-Off? Did you think it would be as good as it
turned out to be?
TK: I probably answered this in the question above, but the experience itself was insane. Again, I was so disappointed to not be in Montreal for that Saturday night game, but it still felt like a small victory that so many people were talking about hockey, which was the biggest thing for me.

Someone my age (27) has very few international hockey memories, and I have always been jealous of people like my dad who can go on and on about the Canada Cup and things like that. It felt cool to have a memory of my own.

I was in the camp that it would be competitive and that the players would try and all that because they are hockey players and they have a lot of national pride. What I was wrong about is that I thought it would be a big deal just for the hockey world and for the few of us hockey sickos on Twitter and that is it.

When it was leading shows like “Get Up” on ESPN, I was floored. It was also cool to have my dad with me there as well.

As I said, people were not sure how it was going to go. We, as a company, were like “Yeah, Tim. Just go have fun with it”.

I invited my dad weeks before the tournament started, and then all of a sudden it blew up. I would normally have had a producer traveling with me, but then I could not just uninvite my dad, so he had to be my producer and had to rise to the occasion in a big spot, which he did.

PH: Speaking of memorable hockey events, you were at UBS Arena when Ovechkin set the new
NHL record for goals scored in breaking Gretzky’s record of 894 goals. What was that experience like for you as a longtime hockey fan?
TK: That was beyond my wildest dreams. That is probably the coolest thing I have ever seen in person.

Again, similar to the stories I have been telling, hockey did not seem like a big priority at Snapback. I am not saying this in a bad way, but hockey is a niche sport.

After the momentum of the 4 Nations Face-Off, leading right into Ovie was just the perfect storm for me, but I still had reservations. Sure enough, Jack was like, “Well, we have got to get you there to see the record broken, right?” I was like “Yeah, of course… Are you serious?”

For me to have that opportunity to see history in person was hard to put into words. I grew up in a sports family, so I have always kinda been hit over the head with “You missed the good ole days,” like Mike Tyson, Pete Rose’s hits record, the Summer of 98, Miracle on Ice, and all of that.

To now have my kind of “I can tell my kids I was there for that moment” was surreal. And that is just as a sports fan, not even as a Capitals fan or a die-hard Ovie follower. It was just sports.

On top of that, the fact that I got Ovoe and the 4 Nations Face-Off in a year when I was not expecting to do much hockey content. It made it all so much sweeter.

PH: Is there anything else that you would like to share with hockey fans?
TK: I would just say that recently I went through this epiphany that hockey is so obsessed with
“growing the game”, and a lot of leagues are, and that is fine. I want more people to learn and find
out how great this game is.

If Colorado did not have a team, who is to say I ever would have fallen in love with hockey? But in the same breath, if you are already a fan, do not let that get in the way of just enjoying the sport yourself and sharing that with others you know who love it.

You do not have to sell someone who is not a hockey person 24/7. There are times for that, but not at the risk of exhausting yourself and missing the essence of why you love it in the first place.

I got into that cycle early in my career, and it has been far more liberating to just enjoy the sports you love. For a while, I felt like I always had to convince someone they had to like hockey before I talked about it, but that is not the case.

If you like hockey, then just talk about hockey, and more often than not, the growth will take care of itself. I have had countless people tell me they have become a hockey fan just from seeing my passion for the sport and for me that is pretty damn good.