SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The steep steps up to the press box at War Memorial Arena aren’t for the faint of heart.



When you take your seat, there isn’t much wiggle room, either, not for a bigger guy like me, anyway. But as I ducked through the perch of the cozy, near 70-year-old barn Jan. 11 for the American Hockey League matchup between the Lightning’s Syracuse game with Cleveland, I found a spacious suite at mid-ice (built four years ago for Lightning management).



There sat Lightning GM Julien BriseBois, who wasn’t buying my wistful appreciation for the NHL press boxes.



“What can be better than this?” he asked.



BriseBois may be a first-year Lightning GM, but he cut his teeth as a hockey executive in cozy confines like these all over the American Hockey League. It was while GM of Montreal’s AHL Hamilton that BriseBois started to believe he could run an NHL team one day. And it’s here, in Syracuse,...