When Sam Gagner signed a one-year deal with the Columbus Blue Jackets in the off-season, the titular song from Disney World’s It’s a Small World attraction might as well have been playing.
Surrounded by an almost endless number of personal connections made throughout the 27-year-old forward’s hockey life, he quickly felt right at home in what is truly a small, small world.
The team’s general manager Jarmo Kekalainen had scouted the then-17-year-old Gagner, a star for the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, while in the St. Louis Blues’ front office. Kekalainen’s assistant GM Bill Zito had also known Gagner from his days building up the Acme World Sports agency, an industry in which Sam’s father, ex-NHLer Dave Gagner, is involved in as a partner with the Orr Hockey Group.