From Intern to Insider: Marco D'Amico on Hockey & Sports Media
About this Event
Tuesday, September 29. The Toronto Leafs host the Montréal Canadiens on opening night at the Scotiabank Arena. At 5 p.m., Marco D'Amico walks twelve minutes to Scotiabank Arena to cover the game.
Until then, he's yours.
The short version
In 2016, Marco D'Amico was an unpaid statistics intern at a Montréal radio station. Not a reporter. Not on air. The person who kept the numbers.
Nobody was going to hand him a beat, so he built one. He started publishing his own NHL Draft analysis on a blog nobody asked for. He got unreasonably good at the least glamorous corner of hockey (contracts, the salary cap, the CBA) at a moment when almost nobody else had bothered. He kept going until the work itself became the credential.
Today he is an accredited Montréal Canadiens beat reporter, co-host of , and a regular voice on TSN, RDS, CBC, CTV and BPM Sports (the same station where he interned nine years ago).
Nobody gave Marco D'Amico a job. He built a credential until they had to.
What you'll actually get
This is not a motivational talk. It's a working session on the mechanics:
- How to manufacture your own credential when no masthead will give you one
- How to pick a specialization, and why the boring, technical corner is almost always the open one
- How to turn writing into broadcast reps, and why doing both compounds
- How a source decides to trust someone with no title
- What being wrong in public actually costs, and how you keep credibility afterward
- How a hockey journalist assembles an income in 2026 (staff work, podcast, radio hits, freelance)
Why this date is not an accident
This event lands thirteen days into a brand-new NHL collective bargaining agreement. The first 84-game season since 1995-96. A playoff salary cap. Shorter maximum contract terms. No more deferred salary.
Every rule Marco explains for a living just changed, and he is one of a very small number of working reporters who can tell you what those changes actually do to real contracts. You will hear these rules referenced all season by people who don't understand them. This is your chance to be someone who does.
He is also a Montréal Canadiens reporter, in Toronto, on Leafs–Habs opening night. Bring your questions.
Who this is for
- Sport Media students who want the beat
- RTA Media Production students trying to build a name in a crowded field
- Journalism students wondering how specialization actually works in practice
- Anyone who has been told to "build your personal brand" and suspected there was a more useful answer
You do not need to follow hockey to get value from this. The mechanism transfers to any beat.
The afternoon
- 2:30 PM - Doors open at the Allan Slaight Radio Institute (ASRI) at the Rogers Communications Centre (RCC - 80 Gould St.) at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)
- 2:45 PM - Coffee & snacks served
- 3:00 PM - Welcome
- 3:10 PM - In conversation with Marco D'Amico
- 3:45 PM - Audience Q&A
- 4:30 PM - Close
- 7:00 PM - Puck drop at Scotiabank Arena. You'll make it :)
Press Row — 12 seats, before the main event
Twelve students get twenty-five minutes with Marco before the event, around a table, with no stage and no microphone.
To be considered: register for a Press Row ticket and submit your question at checkout. Senior Sport Media and Journalism students are prioritized. This is the format where internships and freelance leads actually start.
These twelve seats will go first. Register early.
Details
- Free. Registration required. The room has limited seating.
- The Allan Slaight Radio Institute: Rogers Communications Centre, 80 Gould St, Toronto.
- RTA's radio broadcasting centre: five studios, four interview rooms, and the home of SpiritLive.
- Presented by RTA School of Media (Media Production/Sport Media), The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
CAD 0.00
