Jim Devellano
Canadian ice hockey executive
James Devellano (born January 18, 1943) is a Canadian sports executive. He currently serves as the senior vice-president & alternate governor of the Detroit Red Wings National Hockey League (NHL) team and vice-president of the Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball (MLB) team. He is also part owner and alternate governor of the Saginaw Spirit.
During Devellano's time with the Red Wings, he played a large role in building the teams that eventually won multiple Stanley Cup Championships, including the drafting of Steve Yzerman and Nicklas Lidstrom as well as bringing the Russian Five together, three of whom he persuaded to defect from Russia in order to play for the Wings.
Early career
Devellano is originally from the Toronto area, growing up in the Cabbagetown and Scarborough areas. In 1959, he dropped out of high school after failing grade 9 algebra, and found work in the Toronto garment district for 80 cents an hour. He also spent time coaching and playing hockey, and closely followed the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Marlboros.
In the 1960s, Devellano was employed by the Canadian government as a claims adjuster. During his frequent business trips, Devellano watched as many major junior hockey games as he could, and eventually found a job with the St. Louis Blues, working on spec (essentially no guaranteed compensation) as an amateur scout for general manager Lynn Patrick and head scout Frank Mario.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1669776. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jim Devellano” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.