From Chico State to Seattle, Wildcat Still Sharing the Gospel of Hockey
“I’ve never experienced community like I did in Chico. I try to live my life with no regrets, but I do regret only going there for two years. That place is magic.”
-Seattle Kraken Vice President of Communications Ben Guerrero
Ben Guerrero’s career in professional hockey has taken him from San Jose to Washington, DC, back to the Bay Area, and now to Seattle, where he’s the vice president of communications for the National Hockey League’s newest franchise, the Kraken. But he says there’s no place quite like Chico.
“I’ve never experienced community like I did in Chico,” Guerrero said. “I try to live my life with no regrets, but I do regret only going there for two years. That place is magic.”
Guerrero grew up in San Jose right along with the expansion Sharks. He was five during the franchise’s first season and attended his first game in the third grade.
“There’s nothing like live hockey,” Guerrero said.
As a lifelong fan of the game, he spread his love for the Sharks with his Chico State classmates.
“I would take my roommates to watch games and they became fans,” Guerrero said. “If we saw someone with a Sharks jersey on, they’d get an invite to come along. We developed a small, niche community. It was a good time.”
After graduating with a degree in communication studies and a minor in broadcasting in 2008, Guerrero went to work for the San Jose Giants and San Jose Sharks.
He’s climbed to the highest rungs of the professional sports ladder, but he still regards his time in Chico as foundational, in part due to retired professor Vivi McEuen (MA, Information and Communication Studies, ’87) whom he credits with the push that propelled him into both positions.
“It was the last semester of my senior year, and I was halfway checked out,” Guerrero recalls. “But she made us figure out our priorities and asked us to explore whether the way we were living our lives aligned with those priorities. It was incredible. I still live my life by those concepts today.”
McEuen also made her students pick up the phone and do informational interviews with people working in industries they were considering. Guerrero met his future bosses with the San Jose Giants and San Jose Sharks that way.
“I owe a lot to Professor McEuen,” he said. “Her impact on my life has been tremendous.”
Guerrero left his jobs with the Giants and Sharks when he was hired as the media relations manager of the Washington Capitals. But he eventually landed his dream job back with the Sharks—the team that introduced him to hockey.
It turns out, he wasn’t the only Wildcat working with the Sharks. Guerrero met Sean Maddison (Communication Design, ’97) and Paul Davis (Communication Design, ’04) during his second stint with the Sharks. Maddison is a producer for the Sharks television broadcasts on NBC Sports Bay Area, and Davis is a director. The most well-represented college on the Sharks team plane was not a hockey school like Boston U or Michigan. It was Chico State.
“The second we realized we were all from Chico, it was like boom: best friends,” Guerrero said. “There’s a special bond anytime you meet a fellow Chico State grad.”
While Maddison and Davis are still working with the Sharks and involved in other projects, Guerrero surprised even himself by leaving to work for the Kraken in 2021. But he has no regrets.
“I didn’t think I would ever leave the Sharks again, but when the chance to help build an expansion team from the ground up came, I had to take it,” he said. “There just aren’t many opportunities like that that come around.”
The work was similar to what Guerrero has always done—grow the game of hockey—just on a larger scale. The results have been massive.
On January 1, 2024, the Kraken hosted the NHL Winter Classic in front of 47,313 fans who banged their Kraken-beanie-covered heads to Nirvana’s “Lithium” each time the team scored on the way to its 3-0 victory.
“That was one of those moments you never forget. It felt like the entire city was there for one reason, one purpose. It was amazing.”
-Guerrero
“Chills,” Guerrero said when asked about the experience. “That was one of those moments you never forget. It felt like the entire city was there for one reason, one purpose. It was amazing.”
Guerrero appears to have found some magic once again.
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