John Chayka of the Arizona Coyotes speaks at the podium during round one of the 2016 NHL Draft at First Niagara Center on June 24, 2016 in Buffalo, New York. (Getty Images)

John Chayka views the Arizona Coyotes no differently than a brand new company.

Turning the team around requires the same amount of work and overall dusk-til-dawn approach as a corporation in the earliest part of its existence.

The 27-year-old Chayka said he rises at 5:30 a.m. in his Scottsdale home to head to the team offices in order to beat local traffic. His day is then mostly full of phone calls and working with his team before he finally goes to bed late at night.

“I get a quick workout in and get down to business because a lot of these guys are on the East Coast so I deal with them early on and then we’ve got practice and dealing with the coaching staff and all of our staffs, so it’s a more than full-time job,” Chayka said in a sit-down interview with Puck Daddy at the recent NHL general managers meetings in Boca Raton, Fla. “I’ve got a wife who is very accepting and understanding and right now, it’s an investment. It’s no different than when I started any business. It’s a startup, it takes a lot of work up front to put in place a processes and hire the right people and that’s how I view this is basically as a startup and we’re kind of inching our way towards profitability but that’s the toughest part. Once this thing turns the corner, that’s when things get easier in terms of riding some momentum.”

While most people Chayka’s age are trying to enjoy their youthful years, the Coyotes general manager is being tasked with a very adult job of turning around an NHL organization that has fallen on tougher times the last several season. The Coyotes have missed the playoffs the last four seasons and will likely not make the postseason this year.

Last offseason the Coyotes named Chayka their general manager after a year as the team’s assistant general manager/analytics.

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Prior to joining the Coyotes, he had co-founded and served as director of hockey operations at Stathletes Inc. since 2009, a hockey analytics firm that tracks data through video analysis process and breaks down the game to provide objective insight into player and team performance tendencies.

Chayka also never played at the professional level, reaching the BCHL before suffering a career ending injury.

His promotion then at the age of 26 made him the youngest person to be named a general manager out of the four major North American pro sports.

“I was sitting on the bench at the Hartford Whalers at his age, just playing hockey,” Coyotes coach Dave Tippett said. “I wasn’t in management that’s for sure. I was just thinking about how to stay in the NHL is all I was doing. He’s certainly mature beyond the number of his age for sure and I think he has been that way his whole life. I think he’s very methodical and well-spoken. Just a mature guy.”

There is precedence in other sports for people like Chayka to come in at a young age and try to change how an organization operates.

Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels was one of the first of a group of younger general managers without pro playing experience that came into Major League Baseball last decade. In 2005 He became the youngest GM in the history of MLB at 28 years and 41 days and presided over the Rangers as they went from a middle-of-the-pack team to a group won back-to-back ALCS championships.

According to Daniels the biggest issue with being a young general manager wasn’t so much putting the team together. It was managing the people around him.

“The job doesn’t change whether you’re 27 or 67. The difference is experience, how you handle people, how people handle you, expectations, that whole deal. I think one of the things, one of the bigger challenges is just you’re managing folks with a lot more life experience than you have. So there are things that are affecting their lives that you haven’t walked yet. I’m talking about marriage and real life where no matter how good your ideas may be about the task at hand, you need everybody on the same page,” Daniels said. “You need the organization to run smoothly and to do that you have to manage people. I had not led a department directly when I got the job so it’s just a host of things that go along with that that I had a feel for but I hadn’t done, and so I think that’s the challenge.”

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