From Navy SEAL to NHL front office: How Wild's ‘big brother' teaches players to overcome adversity

New York Times

15-07-2025

Editor's note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
One day in January, a collection of minor-league hockey players from the Minnesota Wild visited the Navy SEAL base in San Diego. What they witnessed blew their minds.
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A group of trainees was going through the unit's rigorous Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, designed, as the Navy puts it, to develop 'men of the strongest character.' There were barrel rolls in the sand, a blaring bullhorn and constant yelling from officers. The players marveled as teams of six carried a boat on their heads into the ocean and back. It was 50 degrees outside. It looked freezing.
As he watched in appreciation, David Spacek, a 22-year-old Czech in the Wild's farm system, remembers thinking: 'I wish I were playing hockey right now.'
Brett McLean, then the head coach of the Wild's AHL affiliate in Iowa, was behind the tour. It would offer some needed perspective during a rough start to the season. To help arrange it, McLean tapped into one of the Wild's secret weapons — a vital member of the front office who spent nine years as a Navy SEAL.
Aaron Bogosian, 38, is technically the Wild's human performance specialist, but he considers himself a 'big brother' to the young players. His past as a SEAL is mentioned in the team's media guide, but that's it. He's tight-lipped about his time in the unit.
Still, Aaron, the brother of 17-year NHL defenseman Zach Bogosian, boasts skills that help give the Wild an edge in making character assessments of young players, both ahead of the draft and when they arrive as prospects.
His approach is part lived experience, part mindfulness. He has talked about the lessons he learned from 'hell week' with the SEALs and shared breathing exercises to help center struggling players. He builds relationships and tries to instill confidence.
'When someone believes in you, it does something to you,' he says.
He focuses on mindset. He says many AHL players are capable of playing in the NHL, but need to dig deeper to find 'what they're willing to do to get there.'
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His presence with the Wild underscores a larger trend in professional sports, where organizations have increasingly tapped into the life experiences of military veterans in hopes of bolstering their leadership and culture.
'What separates him from a lot of people is he didn't learn by a book; he learned by experience,' his brother Zach says. 'That's huge, to relate to people of all sorts. He doesn't walk around talking about military stuff. I think there's a respect factor and a mystique and mysteriousness about what he's done.'
Aaron, who played four years at St. Lawrence and another four in pro hockey (AHL and ECHL), finds that there are a lot of similarities between the military and being part of a sports team. You're a collection of individuals who have to come together as a group for a common goal. There's adversity, challenges and pressure.
That was Aaron's message that January day. The players heard speeches from instructors and watched 30 minutes of SEAL training. They noticed 'the bell,' which trainees can ring three times to quit. Aaron mostly sat back, hoping the prospects would learn about perseverance and toughness.
'It was so cool how you ask the people after, 'You think you could do that?' And they're like, 'Probably not,'' says goalie prospect Jesper Wallstedt, who was there that day. 'But everyone realized that, for the six buddies (training), I don't want to be the guy that let down the other guys. … You end up in that circle. 'OK, well, I'll do it. Maybe not for myself, but I'll do it for someone else.''
When Aaron defines character, he doesn't necessarily draw on his SEAL experience.
Or his journeyman hockey career.
He thinks of his father, Ike, affectionately dubbed 'Iron Ike Tyson.'
The Bogosian brothers — Ike Jr., Aaron and Zach — grew up in the tiny, blue-collar town of Massena, N.Y. The family business, BC Cleaning, was a 30,000-square-foot warehouse behind their five-bedroom home. Their father, like his father and grandfather, was in the cleaning business, starting with clothes, then carpets and mats, mostly for commercial businesses.
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This would be the kids' playground — but only after the work was done. If doing hard things reveals character, the boys had plenty of experience from an early age. They'd empty the Braun industrial washing machine, which held 600 pounds of mats. The building was hot. The mats were heavy. The kids would have to first pull them out, then often untangle them. Then they'd move them to the dryer. Rinse, repeat.
'We'd be doing that for hours,' Aaron says.
While Zach became a notable hockey player — the No. 3 pick by the Thrashers in 2008 — Aaron was a grinder. He was a 6-foot, 190-pound hard-nosed center who topped out at 14 goals his senior year at St. Lawrence. 'Not the biggest guy,' Zach says, 'But played with a lot of heart.'
Aaron never really got close to an NHL call-up, playing a combined 64 AHL games for Springfield and Peoria. But his experience helps him now relate to what prospects are going through — the growing pains, the struggles, the wondering if they will move up the ladder, or down it.
When his hockey career stalled, Aaron had another calling in mind. Both he and Zach had always been interested in the military, having had a long line of family members who served. Aaron met a former Navy SEAL in Massena when he was 16, Tom Phalon, and 'wanted to be like him,' he says.
By the time Aaron went through the SEAL training, he was in his late 20s. His pro hockey career was over. That year, in 2015, Aaron married Cassie, who had played basketball in Massena and met him in his senior year at St. Lawrence. Through Aaron's years with the SEALs, moving to bases in San Diego, Virginia Beach and Tampa, they had two of their three children, Isaac, 7, Tucker, 4, with Lusine (Lulu) arriving two years ago. Aaron's father, Ike, says his son always checked in when he could while on missions, even if the family couldn't know where he was.
'A lot of times you're in the dark about what they're doing or where they are,' Zach says. 'But you realize he's with the best of the best and that's who you want to surround yourself with.'
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As Aaron was transitioning out of the SEALs in 2022, he was looking into what he would do next. He was stationed in Tampa, which gave him a chance to attend the 2021 Stanley Cup boat parade for the Lightning when Zach was with that team.
Matt Hendricks, the current Wild assistant general manager and Iowa GM, got to know Zach through their time training together in Minnesota. He met Aaron and eventually reached out to see if he'd be interested in coming to speak at the Wild's development camp the summer of 2022. At first, Aaron resisted, telling him he wasn't a motivational speaker.
But Aaron felt like it could be a good way to get back into hockey and make an impact. So he went.
Before he officially came on board, Aaron was given a strong endorsement from Ray Shero, the late former GM and Wild senior adviser. Shero, a fellow St. Lawrence alum, had been a mentor to Aaron. He urged Wild president of hockey operations and GM Bill Guerin to bring Aaron in, telling him: 'It's a no-brainer.'
The first time Carson Lambos, a lanky defense prospect, met Aaron was during his introductory talk at the 2022 development camp.
The story Aaron told that day was about 'hell week' during training with the SEALs. Aaron was 28 at the time, and many of the other trainees were in their late teens or early 20s. They were in the middle of the legendary boat drill, where six SEALs carry a boat (with their heads) up and down the beach, into the water and back. Aaron got banged up but fought his way through it.
'The message was, 'Either you're pulling the boat down … or you're carrying it and doing your part,'' Lambos recalls. 'Either you're hurting the team or you're helping the team. You don't want to quit. You don't want to be the dead weight.'
Aaron doesn't only lean on military anecdotes. He talks about his career in pro hockey, about growing up in Massena as a descendant of Armenian immigrants. He also taps into his education, having a master's in strategic leadership and working toward another in sports psychology. He's working on getting his CMPC (certified mental performance coaching certificate), as well.
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'Everything I'm saying to them is based off my experience,' Aaron says. 'How I approached something that was going to be hard, or my mentality going through it. I tell them, 'This is what I do,' give them something else to think about.'
Some common themes are not focusing on the past (like a bad play, bad game) but on the process. He'll talk about understanding that pressure is a privilege, not a burden.
'You have that pressure on you because people believe in you,' he says. 'You're in that moment for a reason.'
Lambos needed the advice. The 2021 first-round pick was struggling in his first couple of years in pro hockey. Call-ups weren't coming. He got a lot out of his talks with Aaron, which usually came casually in the hallways in Wells Fargo Arena or over lunch. They went over breathing exercises and Aaron gave him book suggestions.
'You're worrying when things aren't going well, or, 'I haven't been called up,' or, 'I didn't play good last night — where does that put me in management's eyes?'' Lambos says. 'You get caught up in that and are thinking, 'If I don't do this by this time, it's going to be worse for me.' That's just a lot of wasted energy. I was guilty of it last year a lot. (Aaron's) big thing is about being present and staying within the game. You make a mistake? What's done is done. Be ready for your next shift and don't be afraid to make plays.'
Aaron spent four or five days around Iowa with Marco Rossi during the 2022-23 season. Rossi had been sent down after managing to score just one point in his first 19 games that season. They'd have lunch one day, dinner the next. Aaron told Rossi to 'be where your feet are' and not to view going to Iowa as a failure.
'A lot of guys do, when you get sent to the AHL,' Aaron says. 'It's a tough pill to swallow. The NHL is the dream. So we were having him focus on just getting better and not focusing on getting back up. All those individual accolades, team accolades, come if you focus on getting better every day.'
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Rossi rebounded with 16-, 21- and 24-goal outputs the next three seasons, playing 82 NHL games in each of the past two. Aaron says it's a credit to Rossi's work ethic, determination and resilience (Rossi missed a year of development due to COVID-19 and a heart condition).
'No one can question his resilience,' Aaron says. 'No one can take that away from him.'
Aaron was a sounding board for Wallstedt during a season the touted goalie prospect called 'terrible.' He's made trips to visit forward prospects Riley Heidt and Ryder Ritchie. He's in consistent contact with Rasmus Kumpulainen, who played this past year in Finland. When Charlie Stramel was having a rough time during his second season at Wisconsin, Aaron would drop in and have lunch with him on campus.
'I was going through some tough, tough times, and I wasn't playing the way I wanted to play,' Stramel says. 'He was there for me in the aspect of using what he's known as a player and a SEAL, to just stick to the course. Do what makes you a good player. 'Love the game,' was a big thing we talked about. Enjoy the game and make the most of the opportunity.'
Says Aaron: 'I'm really proud of the way he's dealt with everything. Being a first-round pick, people are always going to talk about you. People are going to say, 'He's a bust' or this or that. He's never with me showed it once. I don't think the belief ever left him.'
Aaron enjoys that the bulk of his role is doing character assessments. Area scouts still do most of the on-the-ground work ahead of the draft, from watching players to doing individual interviews during the season. But Aaron helps give them a guideline for good questions to ask, and follow-ups, with the goal of identifying and measuring an individual's character.
He thinks back to before Zach was drafted in 2008, when the Kings sent a handful of staff members to the family's home. They spent three hours there. 'That was the first time I thought about it, and I was like, 'I wonder if other teams do this?'' Aaron says.
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Wild director of amateur scouting Judd Brackett says Aaron has been an invaluable part of the scouting staff. Aaron doesn't interview, say, 100 players on the team's draft list, but he'll go deeper once they narrow it down. He'll do one-on-one Zoom calls with players, coaches and billet families. Scouts can identify talent. What the Wild are looking for is whether there's a growth mindset. When a player hits a wall, how will he respond?
'The biggest thing I'm trying to preach to these guys on the American League team — they're so close,' Bogosian says. 'They're really close to the NHL.
'It's really what you're willing to do to get there. That's all that matters.'