NHL, Rock and Wrap It Up! Announce Partnership to Distribute Unused Concession Food to Those in Need

NEW YORK, Oct. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Hockey League is partnering with Rock and Wrap It Up! to fight hunger across the United States and Canada.  This season, all 30 of the League's Member Clubs have committed to work with RWU to pack up all prepared but unsold concession food on game nights for redistribution to local shelters and places of need.

Several NHL Clubs have long-established working relationships with Rock and Wrap It Up! and have donated more than 170,000 meals since 2007. As of Opening Night of the 2010-11 season, all 30 are ensuring that their excess in-arena food doesn't go to waste and that fewer families in North America go to bed hungry, making the NHL the first sports league to have all of its Member Clubs participate in Rock and Wrap It Up!

"I am extremely proud that every one of our 30 Clubs will help combat hunger this season by teaming up with Rock and Wrap It Up!," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "Our players and Clubs are dedicated to serving their local communities and it is our League-wide pledge to be responsible stewards of our planet. There is no better example of that commitment than our partnership with Rock and Wrap It Up!"

Rock and Wrap it Up! was founded by Syd Mandelbaum, a forensic scientist by trade, who in 1991 coupled his love of music and passion for wiping out hunger by collecting and redistributing leftover food from rock concerts. RWU was launched nationwide in 1994 with the support of MTV. It has since broadened its scope to include collaboration with more than 150 bands, 200 schools and universities and more than 50 sports franchises to collect in excess of 100 million pounds of food that have fed more than 200 million people.

"Rock and Wrap It Up! recognizes how vital and valuable our partnership with the National Hockey League is," Mandelbaum said. "Poverty in North America is at a dire and critical point. The National Hockey League and its franchises will help feed millions more who hunger while keeping thousands of tons of food out of landfill. Food recovery has become part of the culture of the National Hockey League."

About the NHL www.nhl.com

The National Hockey League, founded in 1917, is the second-oldest of the four major professional team sports leagues in North America.  Today, the NHL consists of 30 Member Clubs, each reflecting the League's international makeup, with players from more than 20 countries represented on team rosters. According to a Simmons Market Research study, NHL fans are younger, more educated, more affluent, and access content through digital means more than any other major professional sport. The NHL entertains more than 250 million fans each season in-arena and through its partners in national television (VERSUS, NBC, TSN, CBC, RDS, RIS, ESPN America, ASN and NHL Network™) and radio (NHL Radio™, Sirius XM Satellite Radio and XM Canada).  Through the NHL Foundation, the League's charitable arm, the NHL raises money and awareness for Hockey Fights Cancer™ and NHL Youth Development, and supports the charitable efforts of NHL players. For more information on the NHL, log on to NHL.com.

About Rock and Wrap It Up! www.rockandwrapitup.org

Rock and Wrap It Up! is a global think tank working to reduce poverty. Using greening tactics, we recover food and other assets to be given to agencies fighting poverty, increasing their operating budgets. This allows the agencies to hire more services such as tutors, social workers, job placement counselors and mental health counselors to attack the root cause of poverty.  Rock and Wrap It Up! recovers food and other assets in Sports, Music, Schools, Film, T.V. and Hotels. Rock and Wrap It Up! helped to write and implement the Federal Food Donation Act of 2008 which encourages all federal buildings to feed the hungry and keep food out of landfills.

SOURCE National Hockey League