Five Questions with David Levien

NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Five Questions With …" runs every Tuesday. We talk to key figures in the game and ask them questions to gain insight into their lives, careers and the latest news.

The latest edition features "Billions" co-creator David Levien:

David Levien has many important titles with the popular Showtime television series "Billions."

Co-creator. Executive producer. Writer.

Hockey guy.

"I'm the hockey guy because I just know a little bit more about it than (co-creator and writing partner) Brian [Koppelman]," Levien said. "Out of a two-person field, I'm slightly in the lead."

But the hockey guy sometimes needs an assist. Last season, while writing a scene where the show's lead character, Bobby Axelrod (a hedge-fund billionaire played by Damian Lewis), explains teamwork to his staff by referencing Washington Capitals forwards Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, Levien was having difficulty getting it just right.

"So I'm like, 'Let's call my kids, they're going to sort this out,'" Levien said of his two oldest sons, Joseph, 17, and James, 15. "I called them, and they immediately set this up. We had it slightly wrong, and they fixed it for us. Bar down. That was the phrase."

And did the boys get to see their names when the credits rolled at the end of the show?

"No," Levien said. "They get to live in the house and get three square meals based on the proceeds of all the work. And they get to go to their fair share of [New York] Rangers games."

Over the years, Levien, who grew up on Long Island during the New York Islanders dynasty in the early 1980s, has worked hockey into other episodes of "Billions." Most notably, he introduced a Russian oligarch character named Grigor Andolov (played by John Malkovich) practicing with the Islanders at Nassau Coliseum before a meeting with Axelrod in Season 3.

"We thought it would be hilarious if [Andolov] came to the U.S. and got himself into a full ice practice, scrimmage type of thing with a professional team, under the guise of considering buying them," Levien said. "The Coliseum had just been redone and the Islanders were willing to allow it and we had Malkovich coming in to play it and he loved the idea. We got the Princeton college team to come in and wear [the Islanders] jerseys. It was great."

If there's going to be more hockey on "Billions" this season, Levien isn't saying. Season 5 began May 3.

Here are Five Questions with … David Levien:

You were very clever when filming that John Malkovich scene at Nassau Coliseum, the viewer never sees Andolov's face while he is skating and making the hit along the boards. Inquiring minds want to know: Was that John Malkovich skating on the ice?

You know, John Malkovich is such a rare commodity that you have to be very careful that you can't risk him getting injured. So, we definitely had a body double who could really skate handy just to make sure there was not going to be any injury. You can't break him!

But Malkovich had been an athletic guy in his youth, I think he played high school football. I don't want to disabuse anybody that he crushed some Princeton player into the boards. All I know is that when he takes off his helmet it's John Malkovich, so he must have been skating, right?

Damian Lewis handles hockey references quite smoothly for a guy from London (England), so is Damian a great actor, a hockey guy or both?

Damian is a great actor, but he's not a hockey guy. He's British and it's not like the game is exactly baked into the culture over there. I'm sure he can drop an incredible [European] football reference -- I think he's a [Manchester United] guy, I'm not positive, maybe Arsenal -- but yeah, we had to explain it to him. He's very sharp, so he understood the context because of the teamwork reference, he just didn't know the particulars. I'm sure he must know who Ovechkin is, I mean everybody does, just by spending a lot of time in the U.S.

Have you always been a hockey guy?

I played when I was a kid … I was never really good, but I loved it and I kept playing during college in the town league. I went to University of Michigan, I mean there was no way I was playing on the Michigan team, but I'd play in the town league with these guys who owned like bowling alleys and stuff like that. It was hilarious and a great time.

I kind of drifted out of it until I had kids and my two oldest sons started playing, and they loved it and we became a hockey family -- the ridiculous morning hours, the late ice time, all that stuff you need to do. They each went on state championship runs in their little divisions, so that was cool.

I remember when one of my kids was a mite and he was learning how to be a goalie at that time and Mike Richter was a dad on the team and he gave him a one-on-one goalie lesson when my kid was like six years old. I was trying to explain to [my son] the significance of that, which he didn't get as a kid, but now thinks is cool.

Do you have a favorite hockey team?

I grew up in Great Neck (New York) and then moved to Colorado, but just during that time when the Islanders dynasty was happening there was no way you couldn't be a fan of those teams, those teams were incredible. My brother and I would play street hockey in the driveway and the guy playing net was always Chico Resch and we'd always do the commentating and the guy coming up ice would always be Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier and Denis Potvin. We were big Islanders fans then, and then I guess later when I moved back to New York it was all about the Rangers. I was living in the city and it was all about them. Now my boys are huge fans, they're Rangers fans.

I happened to go to one of those Islanders playoff games last year that they had at the Coliseum and that was such a great experience. The hockey scene out at Nassau Coliseum is just so great.

What is your go-to hockey memory or story?

Probably the highlight of my hockey career was [my son's] mite or a squirt game that me and my buddy ended up coaching the team because the coach couldn't show up. And we coached against Richter and Mark Messier and our team won in overtime. So it meant everything to us, and it meant nothing to them. We shook hands at center ice, and they were like 'That was a barn burner, eh?!' Couldn't have cared less about the result!