Paul Bissonnette played for the Arizona Coyotes and the Pittsburgh Penguins in a six-year NHL career.JEFF GROSS/GETTY IMAGES/Getty Images
In the six years that Paul Bissonnette played in the NHL, he was most often called upon to do only one thing: fight. Which may help explain why, a decade after hanging up the skates, he seems determined to do as many things as possible.
Bissonnette co-hosts Spittin’ Chiclets, Barstool Sports’s twice-weekly hockey bro podcast. This season, the Chiclets crew began contributing to Prime Video Canada’s Monday night NHL broadcasts; some time in the next few months the podcast itself will move to Netflix in the U.S. Bissonnette also has a regular perch as an analyst on TNT’s NHL coverage in the U.S. He’s a spokesperson for a long list of brands and causes. And on Monday, Kraft Heinz will unveil Bissonnette as an ambassador for its annual Hockeyville rink refurbishment campaign, which this year will award communities in every province and territory.
“I like to stay busy,” he said on a recent Zoom call arranged by Kraft’s Canadian PR agency. “Sometimes when you pull your head up, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t even realize I was doing all this stuff.’”
That gruelling schedule is part of why Bissonnette, a formerly notorious carouser, stopped drinking in the fall of 2024. Bad timing, it would seem: Born and raised in Welland, Ont., he’s a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan who continues to believe in the team – yes, even this year, as he explained on the call. Poor guy.
You seem to aspire to being the King of All Hockey Media. Do you ever wonder how much BizNasty is too much BizNasty?
I hear you. Sometimes in media, you try to worry about oversaturation, but I’m just kind of a clown and I just like to sit in and joke around with different panels and different people. I don’t really, like, take myself too seriously.
Well, Hockeyville is serious. Why did you want to be a spokesperson for it this year?
I actually got the chance to participate in Hockeyville. That was the last time I ever suited up in an NHL game. I was with the L.A. Kings organization.
Right. This was preseason in 2016.
Yeah, we were in Lumby, B.C. It was against the Edmonton Oilers. And sure enough, Connor McDavid, he was going into his second year. That’s when I realized that I was no longer fit to play in the NHL, or even pro hockey in general.
Seeing the community and the kids especially show up and line up, giving you the knuckles and high-fives on the way in … it impacted me directly. I think every community could probably use some improvements to their arena.
It’s such an earnest initiative. Is this maybe an attempt to rebrand BizNasty as BizNicely?
No, I think that most people who know me, especially from my hometown or who I grew up with – I’m pretty harmless. Like, I fought in the NHL. I did so because I had to and I wouldn’t have gotten there if I didn’t. There was a nasty side, but that was mostly on the ice. But even then, I would get beat up, so I wasn’t that nasty to the guys I was fighting.
Did you ever think maybe you just had too big a personality to be a hockey player?
Haha. These guys do have immense personalities when you’re in the locker room and behind the scenes. I just feel like, because a lot of those players have a lot of responsibility on the ice, they don’t want to deal with the noise off of it. I didn’t have to play much. That’s why I had the luxury to go online and be a clown, and I was playing four or five minutes a game. I mostly had to go fight.
Athletes in pretty much every other pro sport have a lot of responsibility.
Okay, but let’s go to the NBA. How many distractions are you seeing per season with things that they have going on? Like we have guys getting suspended because they’re bringing out handguns and stuff like that.
So you’re saying, given a choice between no handguns and handguns, you choose the ‘no handgun’ approach.
[PR person on the Zoom call tries to lightly intercede. Bissonnette laughs and waves her off, tells her not to worry.]
I’m just saying, like, that was an issue that [Ja] Morant dealt with a few years ago with the NBA, right? There’s other issues that NBA players or NFL players, by showing their personality, they’re opening themselves up to criticism. Where I think we can both agree that hockey players don’t show as much personality, probably because they just don’t want to step outside. They want to remain with that ‘team’ concept.
I understand you stopped drinking back in the fall of 2024.
Yeah, I’ve been sober for 15 months now. I love to drink. I just kind of stopped because, like, the workload and mental clarity. And when you hit 40, you can’t recover like you used to if you don’t get proper sleep, you don’t have enough caffeine. So I’m trying to figure it out as I get older, and I just felt like cutting it out, at least in the meantime while I have all this responsibility on my plate, it was the way to go.
That’s got to be hard as a Leafs fan. Okay, so let’s talk about the Leafs for a minute. This is a two-part question. The first part is, do you honestly believe the Leafs can win this year? And the second part is, are you suffering from post-concussion syndrome?
Well, first of all, I feel like they have a solid D-core. They have great goaltending. They have a very solid back end, when healthy. I feel like they probably are missing a piece or two up front. I feel like it’s all health and timing. Like, if you would have asked halfway through the year when St. Louis won it, even as they started playing well, you would have been like, ‘Okay, well, these guys aren’t going to win the Stanley Cup.’ I still believe in this team. I would put them probably in the 10 to 15 range, as far as quality of teams right now. So, I put a lot of teams winning it in front of them, but I don’t discount them. If you get good goaltending, everybody’s got a chance.
And as far as concussions, I sustained a lot of them. I feel like my head’s okay. I have my good days, I have my bad days. But I got to live out my dream doing what I did, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
I probably shouldn’t joke about post-concussion syndrome just because you’re still a Leafs fan.
We do it to ourselves. But it’s fun, man. It’s drama. It’s like watching the Real Housewives. That’s what we’re in it for, man.
Want to make any predictions for the Olympics?
I really hope we see a Canada-U.S. final. I’ve always believed in Canada. I feel like there’s just so much pride behind it and these guys understand what it means to our country. And it gives me goosebumps talking about it. Like, I do a podcast with two Americans. They were trying to give it to me the entire time through 4 Nations, especially after the round-robin win. And it was one of the greatest moments of my life getting to tell them – ‘Hey, we’re the captain of the ship now, buddy. We’re the captain. We always have been and we always will be.’
This interview was condensed and edited.