Craig Custance is Head of Creative Development at The Athletic, a New York Times company. He's also the author of The Franchise: The Business of Building Winning Teams and Behind the Bench: Inside the Minds of Hockey's Greatest Coaches. He joined The Athletic after nearly a decade covering the NHL as a national hockey insider, the last six as a senior writer for ESPN, where he was also a regular contributor on SportsCenter. Before covering the NHL, he was an award-winning journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.