# @akinsanyagabby on LinkedIn

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.linkedin.com/posts/akinsanyagabby_hockey-is-back-here-is-the-story-of-why-activity-7511479292778840064-EuC2
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71185656-inakinsanyagabby-linkedin
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/d6ebe3d7b4.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-10-01T17:36:59.933+00:00
- **Account Owner:** in/akinsanyagabby (@in/akinsanyagabby) — https://gondola.cc/in/akinsanyagabby

## Caption

Hockey is BACK & here is the story of why I owe my entire career to the sport... and technically my high school boyfriend 😂

My high school boyfriend was a hockey player, so as one does, I learned everything about the sport so I could understand what his family was talking about at the dinner table. I ultimately fell in love with it. I was obsessed with Pavel Datsyuk’s stickhandling, T.J. Oshie’s Olympics performance, and had an absolutely irrational hatred for Sidney Crosby.

Ultimately, we broke up. But hockey stayed.

I didn’t actually grow up going to a ton of professional sports games. Tickets were expensive, so if we went, we were usually in the nosebleeds, at a minor league game (s/o to the Gwinnett Gladiators), or there because someone randomly gave us tickets. I LOVED sports, but getting to be inside a professional arena or stadium was few and far between and always a really big deal.

In 2012, my mom and I took a trip to Boston during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. We were staying across from TD Garden, and I remember looking at that arena every day thinking about how badly I wanted to go to a game. So I took the little money I had saved, scalped one ticket, and went to my first-ever playoff hockey game by myself.

I can still remember sitting there surrounded by Bruins nation and feeling the energy in that building. It was right then and there that I thought, I have to figure out how to make this my job.

That summer, while I was working as a backpacking instructor in Rocky Mountain National Park, I emailed basically every NHL team asking if they would let me intern for them. Every team except the Pittsburgh Penguins because, again, Sidney Crosby. 😂

Two wrote back: the New York Islanders and the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Flyers ended up giving me a four-month Media Relations internship during the fall semester of my senior year. My “office” was essentially a storage closet inside Wells Fargo Center, we damn near froze to death, and I could not have cared less. I went from being the girl who was lucky to get a nosebleed ticket to walking into an NHL locker room, sitting in the press box on game days, transcribing postgame press conferences and helping put together game notes.

I was SHOOK. And completely obsessed.

I had no idea at the time, but that tiny office inside Wells Fargo Center would eventually lead me to the Colorado Rapids, then Major League Soccer, and eventually to a little four-person company called Fresh Tape Media.

More than a decade later, I somehow still get to work in sports every day. I’ve gotten to work with the NHL, multiple NHL teams and athletes, and on projects that the girl sitting alone in TD Garden in 2012 would have absolutely lost her mind over.

And after all the jobs, cities and twists that got me here, hockey stayed.

So thank you, hockey, for giving me a life and career I genuinely couldn’t have dreamed up back then.

And happy hockey season to those who celebrate  | 13 comments on LinkedIn

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 79
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 13

## Credits

| Name | Username | Profile | Role |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gabby Akinsanya (Carrier) | @gabbyakinsanya | https://gondola.cc/gabbyakinsanya | Social Manager |

## Events

2026 ftm linkedin content

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