Suiting up for his first NHL game on a Saturday night decades ago at the legendary Montreal Forum — a match broadcast on Hockey Night in Canada no less — was baptism by fire Scott McLellan. It was also part of a lesson in teamwork that he carries to this day in real estate.
McLellan, then a rookie for the Boston Bruins, played his first career game on Dec. 4, 1982, when he suited up against the archrival Montreal Canadiens. He would later go on to be a scout for the Bruins and have to choose between hockey and real estate. While the property industry won that matchup, the parallels between playing on a hockey team and running a division within a real estate company are still with him today in his role as chief operating officer of Plaza Corp., one of Canada's largest builders of residential high-rises, condos and homes.
“A team is built of people with individual skills who share a common goal,” he said. “We have that here. People ask what my goals in hockey were and what my goals in real estate are. Well, my goal in hockey was to win games, and my goal in real estate is to make customers happy."
His tenure in the NHL lasted only a couple of games and was followed by a few years of pro hockey with the Bruins’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Hershey Bears. He eventually hung up the skates in his 20s and started working for Tridel, one of Canada's largest private residential real estate operations.
Even after entering the real estate industry, he remained active in the sport. He coached Junior B hockey, where many of his amateur players went on to play in the Ontario Hockey League, a league that’s historically been a direct pathway to the NHL. McLellan’s success as a coach led to a job as a pro scout for the Bruins, With real estate emerging as his true professional focus, he balanced his NHL work with his real estate job while climbing the corporate ladder and developing skills in building teams in sports and business.
He served as an NHL scout for six or seven years, "and I really liked the work. But I got to a point where I was taking on more and more responsibility at Tridel.”
Helping Plaza grow
McLellan ended up working at Tridel for almost 19 years. He then spent a year at developer Tribute Communities before joining Plaza, where he began working to elevate the image of the company and helping it grow.
“Plaza was relatively new at the time and had some smaller buildings, but they had acquired all these larger sites and I suggested the first thing that needed to be done was to create a brand for Plaza — a professional one, and one that people are going to feel comfortable with, that brokers are going to feel comfortable with, that trades are going to feel comfortable with,” McLellan said.
He added that “I jumped at the opportunity because I had always wanted to implement my own ideas that I knew would work, and they did.”
McLellan brought some professional colleagues with him to Plaza. With that team in place, he focused on each customer the way he once focused on each game, giving his all.
"I want everybody and their grandmother to buy a condominium and think they’re the only purchaser in the world," he said.