1-On-1: with Ryan Lothman
Roadrunners Event Operations Manager Ryan Lothman joined Jonathon Schaffer and Kim Cota-Robles on this week’s Happy Hour Show. For the complete conversation and to hear about where Ryan’s brother works, download this week’s show below.
Listen to “The Man Who Runs The Show” on Spreaker.
Ryan, what does a game day look like for you? When are you getting to the office? When are you leaving the arena? What all goes on behind the scenes?
For a typical game day, I’m at the office from 9:00 or 10:00 AM up until I go over to the arena around like 3:00 P.M. for a 7:00 P.M. puck drop. I can kind of walk through my game day checklist. Overall, what I explain to people when they ask me what exactly my job entails is basically: I’m kind of in charge of all the entertainment in the arena that is in the actual hockey game. There are stoppages, intermissions, media timeouts; that’s what I’m handling. So, all the fun and games that there are when you’re not actually watching the hockey game. That includes our in-game hosts including Beef, Krystal and Yas. As well as all of the events set up and the games set up as well. I’m kind of the liaison to the Tucson Arena. I’m handling all the operations of the game: parking lists, ticket requests from my staff, photo request lists, scheduling, rally runners, production staff, that includes my technical director, camera operators, replay operator, making the format for the game and the rundown and the exact timing of when everything happens, Kim’s PA and writing those out and printing them out. So definitely a lot of things that even if I try to list it all out, I will probably forget to mention some things, but that’s the rough overview of everything.
Tell us about your hockey background and how you got this position with the Roadrunners.
I grew up in Southern California. So, I got my start and introduction into hockey with the Anaheim Ducks being in Orange County and going to their games. I started playing hockey at the age of 6, and I actually started out playing roller hockey. I played roller hockey before I started doing any ice hockey. The first rink I ever played on was right around the street from my house at a park. It was concrete with wooden boards and chain link fence for the glass, but that’s where I started out playing. Then eventually I switched to ice and then got the invite to come up to San Jose State, just to do the try out. It’s club hockey, so it wasn’t actually like recruiting or anything, but definitely once I applied and kind of reached out about where I’ve played in high school hockey, playing for Huntington Beach High School, they invited me to join the team. I played four years of ACHA division two at San Jose State, graduated there and I also played two years of roller hockey at San Jose State. I would have played all four years, but when I was a freshman, the club didn’t exist. Then my sophomore year, they brought the club back, but I didn’t know about it before the season started. So then once I knew about it, I played my junior and senior years and then came to the University of Arizona to get my master’s degree in marketing and joined the roller hockey club team at Arizona as well. And then, I don’t know if it’s a senior year, but my last year at University of Arizona, I started Interning for the Roadrunners in-game-presentation. Then I got brought on full-time after that season and been sticking here with the Roadrunners and moving my way up. Now I’m kind of running all the game operations and stuff like that, so it’s pretty cool.
What’s your favorite thing about playing hockey and what’s your favorite thing about your job?
My favorite thing about playing hockey is scoring goals and getting assists. I’m a forward, not a defenseman and I’m playing for fun on the weekends and the weeknights. You’re not even really allowed to hit or fight in those games. So, I’m not going to sit here and say the best part about playing hockey is hitting people and fighting people. I’ve always just wanted to score goals and contribute to the team in that way. I think my favorite thing about my job is just getting to do a job that’s around hockey and I kind of already said that there’s a lot more things that I’m paying attention to than just the hockey game because I can’t just sit and just watch the game. I have to have one eye on the game and one eye on everything else that’s happening and going on, but at the end of the day, I get to essentially watch 36 games of Roadrunners hockey as my job. I think that’s the thing that I love the most about it, is that I get to see all the goals and everything that happens. Sometimes, I don’t even see what’s going on because I’m looking down at my format, trying to find something or talking to someone else, and I just look up because all the fans are screaming like, oh, Roadrunners goal, go ahead and do goal horn, throw the graphic up on the video board, and all that good stuff. But that’s also. Kind of what I rely on my crew on for. This is now our second season together with me as director. But this is my fourth season, and Daniel has been doing it since the second season that the Roadrunners have been here. So half of it is having a good person in my position, but another half of it is just having a good crew that has been here and knows what to do, so that it doesn’t feel like I have to do everything myself. I think if I had to do that, and I didn’t have people that knew what was going on, it would be 10 times worse and it would feel like I’m 10 times busier.
Walk us through those playoff games from last year. What things did you learn? What things will you apply to future playoff games?
I thought that heading into opening night last year was a lot, and then that was just duplicated when we went into playoffs with the whiteout last year. The first thing that’s so crazy about playoffs is that I’m very much a planner and I look ahead to things and what I need to do to plan for those games. I was used to having a 36-game schedule that’s right next to me on my desk, or on my bulletin board, that I can look at and see the next game coming up. Then we come to playoffs; I know that we’re going to playoffs and second in the division, but I don’t know who we’re playing yet. I don’t know if we’re going to be at home and I don’t know even when the games are. That was like the first challenge of “I need to plan and be ready for everything, even though I don’t know if we’re going to be at home. I don’t know if we’re going to be on the road. I don’t know who we’re playing,” and then the other part of it is even on the staffing side, where it’s just communicating to everyone. “Hey, I don’t know when the games are, but here are the potential dates. Please let me know if you think that you can make it,” or things like that. Then also, it was a best-of-three series; I will keep everyone posted about if that game is even going to happen. Also, with the Whiteout, comes pretty much a full look and feel change for the arena. Obviously switching out our banners for the Whiteout ones. I have to handle that, working with our creative team to get a new intro video for Whiteouts, and all the graphics to match and keeping that Whiteout theme. On top of that, I handled all the giveaways, so I knew that we were doing rally towels and T-shirts.
As a hockey player, what do you think the hardest position on the ice is?
I feel like I’m going to get killed by my current and former goaltenders if I don’t say goaltender. But they’re a weird bunch, so I don’t know if I want to give them that credit or not. I know that I have played goalie in roller a couple times, and I actually had a pretty decent save percentage, so I feel like that makes it so that I don’t have to say goalie because I have experienced there. That’s always their argument, they say, “You’ve never even played goalie, you don’t know how hard it is.” Honestly, I want to say defense because when I’ve had to get back there on my current and former teams, it’s a disaster. I’m not good at it, and that’s not the position that I grew up playing and learning how to play. I’ve always been a forward. I think it’s difficult to defend, more so than it is to create offense. I don’t know if that’s just because I’m an offensive player and that’s what I’ve always done, but I find it easier. Whenever I hop back on defense, I feel like I’m going to get walked all the time and people are just going around me at will. I don’t know if that just means that I’m just bad in general or bad at defense, but I do give defenders quite a bit of credit because it’s tough and you have to skate backwards a lot of the time. That’s obviously more difficult than just skating forward. So, it’s difficult to not only skate backwards, but then you’ve got to try to defend an attacker coming at you so I would say the position I play is honestly probably the easiest. Just going out there and trying to score and I think it’s probably the most difficult, for me at least, to defend. Then obviously, I feel like the goalies have a lot of responsibility and a lot of things to do and they’ve got so much more equipment and padding than the other people.
We’re going to do the draft. Something we don’t do with our guest very often. Ryan, we’re drafting goal songs today, let’s get into it.
Round 1
Ryan: Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis
Kim: Vegas Lights by Panic! At the Disco
Johnny: Bro Hymn by Pennywise
Round 2
Ryan: The Whip by Locksley
Kim: La Bamba by Ritchie Valens
Johnny: Kids by MGMT
Round 3
Ryan: Shout by Otis Day and The Knights
Kim: Start a Riot by Duckwrth and Shaboozey
Johnny: Thunderstruck by AC/DC
Round 4
Ryan: You Make my Dreams by Hall and Oates
Kim: Bad Girls by M.I.A.
Johnny: Come a Little Closer by Cage the Elephant
Round 5
Ryan: SJSU Fight Song by the SJSU Band
Kim: It’s Not My Fault by Renee Rapp
Johnny: Live It Up by Airbourne
