FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — As players and trainers changed out of their business suits and into more comfortable sweats and pajamas, as coaches and broadcasters settled into their first-class seats and took sips of wine and bites of dinner, Andrew Heydt stayed alert just in case something unexpected happened.

That’s the tricky part of Heydt’s multi-faceted, very crazy and extremely busy team-services vocation with the Wild.

Heydt can do his job to perfection, but the organization’s most organized human being is still always at the mercy of others being competent — or unforeseeable variables like a bus getting a flat tire, a hotel catching fire, a tornado in Atlanta making a flight crew M.I.A. or, as it turned out Tuesday night, a broken airplane engine.

Everything was going smoothly for the Wild after they defeated the Ottawa Senators a mere 90 minutes before.

After getting in a quick postgame workout, fulfilling media obligations and showering up, players made the bus on time and all equipment was loaded onto a truck for a half-hour ride to the airport. Players and staff breezed through customs, then boarded their specially outfitted Delta charter for a three-hour flight to Fort Lauderdale ahead of Friday’s game against the Panthers.

The plane pushed back and tired eyes began to close.

Heydt’s stayed open though, and it suddenly dawned on him that pilots were having trouble starting one of the engines. After several attempts to fire it up, the plane taxied back into the gate.

It was midnight.

An on-duty mechanic rushed to the plane to assess the problem. After examination, he informed the captain that the engine was unfixable without parts that were not on hand.

“People ask me all the time, ‘What do you do?’ I compare it to a tour manager with a band,” Heydt says. “I’m a tour manager for roughly 50 people.” (Credit: Katlyn Gambill/Minnesota Wild)

That’s when Heydt sprang into action.

Heydt called a Delta rep in Atlanta to ascertain what could be done.

There were two options: Fly the parts to Ottawa, which would have required the Wild to disembark, once again clear customs in order to officially return into Canada, get new buses and find 40 hotel rooms, or search for a new aircraft.

Finally, the Delta rep found a charter in Cleveland that landed at 1 a.m. after returning the Cavaliers home from Milwaukee. A rested flight crew then had to be found, too.

At 2:57 a.m., with exhausted Wild players and staff still sitting on their defective aircraft in Ottawa, a new plane took off from Cleveland to Ottawa. The plane landed at 3:51 a.m., and the entire team, its equipment and luggage changed planes.

While all this was going on, Heydt’s iPhone was in overdrive because he had to stay in communication with the buses, equipment truck and hotel in Florida in order to adjust arrival times and set up a previously-unscheduled breakfast.

The toughest part, Heydt said, was the unorthodox timing.

“Between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. are not normal business hours,” Heydt said.

The Wild finally left Ottawa at 4:51 a.m. — 5 hours and 51 minutes past their scheduled 11 p.m. departure. The team arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday morning at 7:47.

Adding another layer to all of this? The team had no choice but to get out of Ottawa because on Wednesday, 27 guests from all over the world were meeting the team in Florida for the Wild’s father/mentor-son portion of their four-game trip.

“That’s the funny thing about this job,” Heydt said. “You rely so much on other people to do their job well and rely on so many things to go right to make sure my job is going right. Still, if something’s messed up, it’s my fault.”

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Remember when George Costanza, the “short, stocky, slow-witted bald man” from Seinfeld, became assistant to the traveling secretary for the New York Yankees?

He was responsible for everything from getting Danny Tartabull to a PBS pledge drive, convincing Buck Showalter to switch the fabric of the Yankees’ uniform to cotton, scouting baseball in Cuba and teaching Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams how to hit home runs.

That’s sort of like Heydt’s job.

He has got his hands in the middle of everything, only he’s no assistant and has a fancy title — director of team operations and player relations.

That encompasses just about a gazillion things from the hectic booking of travel to the fun of taking players to see his buddies from the band O.A.R., to the gloom of being the person tasked with informing Jason Zucker that his friend was shot in the Vegas mass shooting in October or delivering the heartbreaking news to coach Bruce Boudreau in September that his brother had died unexpectedly.

“I always know when family members are at games, and I just had this bad feeling something was up because (Boudreau’s wife) Crystal wasn’t at the (Sept. 23 preseason) game against Colorado,” Heydt said. “A couple minutes left in the third, she called and I could tell she was disturbed. She told me that Bruce’s brother (Bryan) had tragically passed, so that was my job to tell him.

“We won, and the team was coming off the ice, and he could tell something was off. I told him to talk to the team, and then we’d talk. He addressed the team and I went back to his office and broke the news to him and that he needed to call his wife ASAP. That’s never an easy part of this job.”

When it comes to the Wild, Heydt — nicknamed “Whitey” since his days working for the Minnesota Twins — organizes basically everything.

He’s on call 24 hours a day, and without his iPhone, he’d be done. That was proven in the wee hours of the morning Nov. 8 in Toronto when goalie Alex Stalock woke him up and needed to rush back to Minnesota because his wife was in labor with the couple’s second child. Heydt woke up General Manager Chuck Fletcher, and suddenly Heydt was booking a flight to Minnesota for Stalock and a flight to Toronto for emergency backup Niklas Svedberg.

“He works harder than anybody in the organization, I think,” Zucker said.

Said Mikko Koivu: “I’ve told this to Chuck, I’ve told this to a lot of people — I don’t think people realize how much he actually does. He’s awesome. You’ve got to have the attitude he has. Just everyday, he’s got to deal with the players, the staff, the media, and a lot of people rely on him. Any issues we have, we call Whitey and he tries to help you out.”

He books their travel and the infinite logistical things that comes with that chore. He’s their concierge, which includes all one-off player and family requests, like private vacations, dinner reservations, concert tickets, postgame passes and gifts.

“In the room, all the guys joke that, ‘Whitey’s got a guy for everything,’” Heydt, 30, said. “If they come to me, I’m determined to get it done.”

“I think (my wife) Carly talks to him during the season more than me,” Zucker joked.

Heydt — always on the lookout for places to get some work done — here uses a tiny table inside L.A.’s Staples Center on Jan. 21, 2016. (Courtesy Andrew Heydt)

He’s in charge of player relations, which is anything marketing or corporate-driven, endorsements, charities or player interaction out in the community. He oversees the checks and balances when it comes to player payroll, which includes making sure players are taxed correctly (pro athletes have to pay different income taxes depending on where they play), making sure the Wild’s minor-leaguers get paid the proper amount of money depending on the days they’re in the NHL or the AHL, making sure the players get their $106 per day per diem on the road.

Heydt even helps video coach Jonas Plumb with instant replays on the road by checking every potential offside or goalie interference for potential challenges.

Players are constantly amazed at all Heydt has to deal with. He even kiddingly refers to himself as, “The Department of One.”

“I always give him a hard time because in San Jose, it felt like we had three or four guys rotating and traveling and doing his job,” Stalock said. “I tell him every day, ‘You need a freakin’ assistant.’ He does an unbelievable job. It’s just crazy how much work he does day-to-day. I couldn’t do it.”

Heydt can cozy up in any nook and cranny of any arena and figure out a way to punch his keyboard. He gets 150 emails a day, hundreds of texts and on any given morning can have 15 people walk in his office in a span of 15 minutes asking for 15 different things.

How’s Heydt stay organized?

“Folders are crucial. Highlighters are crucial. Lists are crucial,” Heydt said. “On the concierge side of it, I don’t write any of that down. It’s always in my head.”

Still, Zucker says it must be a stressful existence to constantly have to worry about every little detail nobody else has to think about.

“Will the bus be waiting? Do they have enough hotel rooms? Is the meal ready? Does the plane’s engine turn on?”

“It’s got to be insane,” Zucker said.

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Heydt’s career took off working with Joe Mauer and the Twins in 2010 and 2012-14. (Courtesy Andrew Heydt)

Heydt, who grew up in Hayfield, Minn., got started in the business as a communications intern at Minnesota State in Mankato. He got an internship with the Vikings during training camp in 2009, then got a full-time internship with the Twins in 2010. Joe Mauer was coming off an MVP season, the Twins were moving into Target Field and the Twins would win the American League Central, so it was a good time to learn the business.

In 2011, he got a full-time job with the Tampa Bay Rays in media relations, then returned to the Twins at the end of the 2012 season with a full-time job in communications specialized in player relations.

Heydt was hired by the Wild on Jan. 7, 2015, — the day Zach Parise’s dad, former North Star J.P. Parise, died.

Heydt had an eventful first month on the job.

He still remembers Day 3 when former Wild coach Mike Yeo called him into his office and said, “Let’s stay an extra night in Chicago” the very next night.

Heydt confidently said, “Yes, sir,” yet in the back of his frightened mind, he knew it wasn’t as simple as making one phone call or typing one key stroke.

He didn’t know where to begin.

“When something changes like that, I have to go down the order again and do the flight, do the buses, do the hotels, do the equipment transfer, do the meals,” Heydt said. “Everything is subject to change … always.”

Day 7, with the Wild in a deep funk, outside the playoff bubble and following a bad loss in Pittsburgh, Fletcher acquired goalie Devan Dubnyk from the Coyotes in the afternoon of Jan. 14.

The Wild were in Buffalo. It’s not easy for a person to fly from Arizona to Buffalo. There were no non-stops and the Wild played the next night.

So Dubnyk had two options. Fly the day of the game and likely not play or take a red-eye on JetBlue through JFK and make his debut tired and behind a desperate team.

With a little coaxing from Heydt, Dubnyk chose the latter.

When players fly commercially, the Wild always put them in first class. JetBlue had no first-class seats, and being last-minute, the 6-foot-6 Dubnyk scrunched into a middle coach seat and flew across the country. Dubnyk arrived in time for the morning skate and mustered up the energy to shut out the Sabres and begin a string of 38 consecutive starts to carry the Wild into the playoffs.

“That was my very first trade, too,” Heydt said. “Devan and I still joke about it today. He thought I was a 10-year veteran from how persuasive I was to get on that JetBlue flight.”

In between booking the unexpected travel of the newcomer, Heydt was also helping to organize the entire team attending the funeral of J.P. Parise the next day — Jan. 16 — back in Minnesota.

Part of Heydt’s job is putting out a lot of fires figuratively, but less than three weeks into his job, he had to quickly react to a literal fire.

Pull up to hotel in Calgary on team bus….all the guests are on the street and fire trucks everywhere. Long night? pic.twitter.com/VT30XN3XHt — Mike Greenlay (@PulledGoalie) January 28, 2015

On Jan. 27, the Wild beat the Oilers and flew from Edmonton to Calgary.

The Wild landed and Heydt texted his contact at the Calgary Westin to let him know that the team would be at the hotel in 30 minutes so the room keys for the traveling party would be ready to be dispersed.

“He responds back, ‘We’re all set to go, but the hotel’s on fire,’” Heydt said. “I responded back, ‘Please explain what that means.’ I called him, and he said, ‘There’s nothing we can do right now. There’s a fire.’”

Sure enough, the Wild’s two buses pulled up to the hotel on that Calgary winter morning and “there were 200 people in the courtyard, 10 fire trucks outside, people running in and out of the building. And it was 1:30 in the morning,” Heydt said. “So, I looked at Chuck and (Yeo), and they said, ‘What are you going to do?’

“So I ran down the street, got a hotel directory and called three to four different hotels. Luckily the Fairmont in Calgary got us in, and we were all in our beds within 45 minutes.”

There’s always something unexpected that Heydt will have to react to.

A few weeks ago, the Wild were suddenly having trouble finding ice to practice on in San Jose, so Heydt redid the Wild’s entire travel schedule in a pinch and the team practiced in Anaheim the morning after playing the Ducks and before its flight to San Jose. His first season, the media bus that carries Wild broadcasters and crew suddenly stalled on a highway, so Heydt had to make the decision to stop the team bus and combine the two. A few seasons ago, on the morning the team was bussing from Toronto to Buffalo, a player realized he lost his passport. Heydt had to get on the phone with the U.S. consulate to figure out a way to get the player into the U.S. at the border crossing without delaying the team. Late last season, Heydt got a call in the first period of a game in Denver with word that storms in Atlanta grounded hundreds of flights and the Wild were missing a pilot to fly them to Phoenix after the game.

“While I was doing instant replay, I had to get on the phone with Delta and get a pilot from Salt Lake City into Denver to get us to Arizona,” Heydt said.

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Heydt works a multi-million-dollar budget, and soon after the NHL regular-season schedule is released in June begins negotiating hotel contracts (every player gets his own room), booking his chartered flights and contacting bus companies. He’s in charge of booking practice ice and setting up the catered menus on the road and after home games and practices.

“I’ll make a giant master calendar, and work from there,” Heydt said. “Then, I’ll meet with the coaches and Chuck and ask the questions, ‘Should we stay an extra night here? Should we travel after the game? Should we stay at this hotel?’”

Earlier this month in Southern California, the Wild had a few days between games against the Kings and Ducks, so the team stayed at a posh resort in Newport Beach for a bonding trip. Heydt set up the villas, team meals and bonding excursions.

When a player is acquired, called up or reassigned by the Wild, Heydt is usually the second call after Fletcher.

It’s Heydt’s job to get the player to wherever the team is and make the logistical arrangements in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement. That means, in the case of free agency, trade or waivers, helping get the player’s family to Minnesota and sometimes paying for lodging of the player and his family, and often times taking on the payments of the player’s residence in his previous city.

Last month, Heydt could be heard from inside his office welcoming Nate Prosser back to the Wild and figuring out how Prosser would get from St. Louis to Minnesota.

When a player makes his NHL debut, it’s Heydt’s job to also invite the player’s family to the game and make and pay for all the travel arrangements.

Last season, Heydt was responsible for getting Martin Hanzal and Ryan White to Minnesota after they were acquired from the Coyotes.

One issue? Heydt had the mumps and was in isolation at a local hotel.

“So I just worked back and forth with them from my hotel room,” Heydt said. “I didn’t have the nerve to tell them that I wouldn’t meet them for four more days because I had the mumps. Hey, you always have to be on. It’s one of those where it’s a 24-hour job. The mumps were a struggle, but I got over it. It’s a joke to this day.”

Boudreau relies on Heydt, especially when he was named Central Division coach at last year’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles.

“When he got told that he was the coach he came into my office and he said, ‘Are you going to come to L.A. with me?’” Heydt said. “I said, ‘I wasn’t planning on it. If you need me to, I will.’ And he goes, ‘OK, no, no, that’s fine.’ A couple days later he comes back into my office and he said, ‘Have you decided if you’re going to L.A. yet?’ I said, ‘I’m not planning on it, but once again, let me know.’ Two days before we left, Coach comes into my office and he goes, ‘You’ve got to come to L.A. with me. I need my handler.’”

Heydt and Wild coach Bruce Boudreau pose for a picture at last season’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles. (Courtesy Andrew Heydt)

Heydt started laughing.

“It’s the comfort of having me there working with the schedule and telling him where to be,” Heydt said. “And I was glad that I went out there because it was a very busy time. He is very popular on the west coast with his previous time with Anaheim. And at the end of the day it was the right move to make.”

Playoffs are a different beast. Heydt has weeks to set up the regular-season schedule, and that changes throughout on the fly.

The playoffs?

In 2016, the Wild conceivably could have had up to five first-round opponents within 48 hours of the season ending, so Heydt was reserving flights, hotels and buses in multiple different cities with an uncertain schedule as to when the Wild may conceivably play there.

Last season, at least the Wild were down to two possibilities — St. Louis and Chicago — and had home-ice advantage, so Heydt wasn’t as frantic.

“It does get a bit nuts sometimes,” Heydt said, laughing.

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After arriving at the Wild’s Fort Lauderdale beach hotel Wednesday morning after an arduous travel experience, Heydt pulled out his laptop to do some work. He wanted to make sure all was ready for the fathers and mentors arriving later in the morning.

Set up this week? A reception and team meal and several non-hockey-related activities throughout the next four days. But the fathers and mentors will get to take part in all team meetings, attend Thursday’s practice in Sunrise, and attend games against the Panthers and Lightning.

“I can’t wait,” Heydt said. “When you get the players and dads together, it’s amazing what stories come out,” Heydt said. “It’s just so cool to see how they were raised and who raised them. That’s the best part of my job: I’m working with great people.”

Heydt’s job can be hectic, but he absolutely loves it and has no problem having his iPhone in his hand or on his nightstand with the ringer on 24 hours a day.

“It’s a bit cliche, but my philosophy is I try to eliminate the outside noise so they can focus on what’s going on on the ice,” Heydt said. “People ask me all the time, ‘What do you do?’ I compare it to a tour manager with a band. I’m a tour manager for roughly 50 people. I keep the wheels moving on a daily basis for 50 people.”

Well, unless it’s training camp when he’s responsible for about 90 people, but that’s another story.

Of his nearly 24-7-365 job, Heydt admits, “It does get a bit nuts sometimes.” (Credit: Katlyn Gambill/Minnesota Wild)

(Top image: Katlyn Gambill/Minnesota Wild)

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