Mehta celebrates Stanley Cup championship at alma mater in New Jersey

FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J. -- Sunny Mehta, who deals in probability for a living, marveled about the improbable odds of having his name etched on the Stanley Cup.

“If a Jersey kid like me, son of immigrant parents, kid who had very mediocre athletic skills, to be honest, if I can be standing here with the Stanley Cup, know that if you dream big, you never know what’s possible,” he said.

Mehta, the Florida Panthers assistant general manager and head of analytics, brought the Cup to Ramapo High School, his alma mater, as part of his day with the prized trophy Monday afternoon.

The event was a homecoming and the first real chance for Mehta and his wife, Nicole, to fully savor Florida’s 4-3 series win against the Edmonton Oilers in the Cup Final.

After fielding questions in the school’s auditorium and granting photo opportunities with the Cup, Mehta had a private showing for Ramapo’s hockey team and its alumni before he and his wife ended the day with Stanley at a private party.

“It’s been a really long time since I’ve been back to this high school and I haven’t lived here in almost 30 years,” Mehta said. “But this is where I grew up, this is where I played hockey. This is where I learned a lot of the skills that I now utilize to be successful, so it’s just nice to give back.”

Ramapo students, alumni and childhood friends of Mehta were elated that he decided to bring the Cup to the high school where he said he was a “forward/benchwarmer” for its hockey team from 1992-96.

“It's unbelievable, right?” said Anand Shukla, a childhood friend who used to play street hockey with Mehta. “Going to high school, playing on the high school team and then being able to bring back the Stanley Cup. I mean, what else is there to give back to the other students? It’s inspiring for the all the kids that are here, all the young hockey players. The dream can become a reality.”

Mike McLachlan, head coach of Ramapo’s hockey program, said he didn’t believe when an email popped up from Mehta on July 8 inquiring whether he could bring the Cup to the school.

“I just about drove off the road,” said McLachlan, who was driving home late that night from a hockey tournament in Suffern, New York. “I almost deleted it because I thought it was spam. How often do you get a note that says, ‘Can you host the Stanley Cup?'”

Mehta said he initially wasn’t sure what to do on his day with the Cup.

He sought guidance from Mario Della-Savia, Hockey Hall of Fame outreach specialist, and Phil Pritchard, the Hall of Fame curator who’s widely known as the Keeper of the Cup, when they flew from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Las Vegas for the 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft.

“He said, ‘What do you think?’” Della-Savia said. “I said, ‘What you want to do is bring it to community, you want to make sure you have a good time as well and you also don’t want to overextend yourself. You don’t want to not enjoy yourself because you’re pulled in every way. You want to have fun.'”

And Mehta appeared to do just that on Monday, sharing stories with teammates from an admittedly not very good hockey team and explaining the work he’s done as a pioneer of analytics in the NHL.

The son of a mother from India and a father of Indian descent, Mehta took one of the more colorful and unconventional routes to the NHL and the Cup.

He’s been a musician in New Orleans, a professional poker player in Vegas, best-selling author (on poker) and a proprietary derivatives trader in Chicago.

But hockey has been his passion since childhood, when he first watched the New Jersey Devils practice on one of the two sheets at the local rink in Totowa.

The Wyckoff, New Jersey, native went on to the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music as a jazz guitarist before working as a musician in New Orleans.

There, he taught himself poker and earned money playing at casinos. Mehta briefly relocated to Las Vegas to play poker full time but returned to New Orleans and remained there for five years.

The common denominator in Mehta’s seemingly eclectic journey was math. He began applying it as part of a budding community of people who were publishing hockey analytics work online.

His work landed him a consulting analytics job in 2011 with Matthew Hulsizer, who at the time was a prospective owner of the Phoenix Coyotes. When the job ended, Mehta took to trading options in Chicago.

“People will say, ‘How did you go from poker to this?’” Mehta said. “To me, there are a lot of similarities. In all cases, I’m kind of using probability and statistic to predict something. In poker, I was using probability and statistics to predict what my opponents were holding. In options trading, I was predicting the volatility of stocks. In hockey, I’m just trying to predict the outcome of hockey players.”

His big break in the NHL came in 2013, when Josh Harris and David Blitzer purchased a majority stake in the Devils. He was hired as director of the NHL’s first full-time analytics department, holding the position from 2014-18.

After leaving the Devils, Mehta earned his master’s degree in data science from The City University of New York while serving as a consultant to the Washington Capitals. He also consulted for six Major League Baseball teams through a partnership with Zelus Analytics.

He joined the Panthers in August 2020 as vice president of hockey strategy and intelligence before he was promoted to his current position in September 2023.