Don meehan prides himself on mentoring the young and gifted. He’s built a thriving business giving sound advice to athletes entering the prime of their sporting lives. It started back in 1981, when Meehan, a McGill law grad, quit his job as a corporate lawyer in Toronto to become a full-time agent. His first big break came a couple of years later, when one of his first clients, a teenager from Michigan named Pat LaFontaine, was drafted into the NHL. Since then, Meehan’s company, Newport Sports Management, has signed dozens of prodigies and overseen their graduation to the big league.

The latest of these is 18-year-old Steven Stamkos, the top-ranked player heading into the NHL draft in June. NHL scouts have tracked Stamkos’s every shift this season. Meehan had the Unionville native on his radar when he was only 15; now the agent is preparing his young client for the coming deluge of paper­work—an NHL contract, endorsement offers, merchandise deals, even investment opportunities.

The clamour for Stamkos puts Meehan in an interesting position. In representing the young forward, he is advisor to and, to some extent, protector of the very thing the Maple Leafs so desperately need: a number one draft pick. The only thing the Leafs need more than strong young players is a new GM, and recent stories in the sports pages name Meehan as a possible candidate for the job. Meehan met with Gord Kirke, a lawyer and agent hired by Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, to help with their search. Not surprisingly, both MLSE and Meehan downplayed the meeting’s significance. But there’s no denying the logic behind it. The Leafs would be hard-pressed to find a better candidate.

There’s nothing splashy about hiring an agent as your GM. NHL owners are suckers for famous names and sentimental story­lines, thinking that a Hall of Fame player or coach possesses the wisdom and magic to turn around a dreary franchise. From a strict business perspective, however, Meehan would top any corporate headhunter’s list. He’s negotiated more contracts than any agent or general manager in league history. If they kept record books on the business side of the game, he would be Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky rolled into one. So the Leafs should not only be thinking about Steven Stamkos; they should be trying to woo his agent as well.

“Hey Steven, Tough night. Get ’em tomorrow,” Meehan consoles Stamkos in the hallway outside the dressing room at the Kitchener Auditorium. Stamkos’s team, the Sarnia Sting, has just lost to the Kitchener Rangers in one of the rare games this winter that Stamkos was kept off the score sheet. It’s after 10 p.m. on a Friday night, and for Meehan it’s been a long day. After the usual cascade of e-mails and phone calls from NHL players and execs in the morning, he flew to Mont­real for an afternoon of contract negotiations for another client, Andrei Kostitsyn of the Canadiens. He returned to Mississauga and joined rush hour traffic, getting to Kitchener just in time to catch the second and third periods.

Now he’s making small talk with Steven and his father, Chris Stamkos. For this, he affects his best rink-side manner: a smile so broad his eyes squint; a handshake that registers firm but not affected; a voice modulated for just the right effect—loud enough to not seem conspiratorial, but not so loud as to seem stagy. Even his accountant-issue dark blue suit, pinstriped, no tie, signals business and informality at the same time. His conversation with the teenager lasts only 90 seconds. But it’s an important 90 seconds. These are the vital moments in which the agent affirms his relationship with his talent, the exact spot where the big business of the NHL meets the grassroots of the game.

Meehan’s trip to Kitchener wasn’t simply to watch Steven Stamkos play. It was also about being seen watching him. He wants the young player to know that Newport’s there. He wants other agents to know that, too, and to not get any ideas about poaching his client.

Back when Meehan started out, there wasn’t much competition. Now that hockey is such big business, everyone wants a piece of the action, including massive international conglomerates like CAA and Octagon. It can be “less collegial,” says Meehan, which is a polite, lawyerly way of saying “more cutthroat.” The cardinal rule for agents: even with a commitment in hand, you have to keep courting, keep reassuring your player that you’re out in front of him and have his back at the same time. “I’ve told Steven’s parents that he is important to me,” Meehan says. “He’s part of my life and my career. Nothing will happen to him in hockey without me having a say.”