Agonized Golden Eagle fans blame Larry Miller for making mistakes, for not caring, for building the Delta Center, for taking the money and being done with it instead of sending out local distress signals so someone would keep the club here.
Miller's side says there were ravenous fans but not enough of them. Break-even was 7,000 a game, but even with the thousands extra who've hurried to get a final look over these last five home games, it'll be tough to hit 5,000 for '93-94. Eagle president Tim Howells says he hasn't heard of anybody saying they'd have bought the team if Miller had let on that it was for sale.The $5-million sale came without warning or recourse. Miller didn't want to beg publicly. When an acceptable offer came up, he took it. It would be a couple years before finances could be righted, if they could be righted in what's now a high-rent-district IHL, and, says Howells, Miller has other businesses and employees to consider.
What went wrong?
Numerous critics who've been close to the inner workings of the club point most to one thing: The Eagles and Jazz should have had separate staffs.
It was that way for two years after Miller bought the team in 1989, but the Eagles had only a few employees. In '91, they threw in Jazz resources. Critics say the Eagles were still "a stepchild," and sales people sold Jazz first. Howells said sales people found sponsors budgeted the same amount as before but split it between Jazz and Eagles. Nothing new was generated.
Last summer, management retrenched and hired hockey people (GM Mike Forbes, marketer Scott Kerr and others with hockey at heart). But the budget for expensive free-agent players - a new IHL necessity - wasn't there, and when the new-parent Islanders didn't provide enough talent, the result was a club season record for losses.
A schedule that had the Eagles playing half their home games in the slow months before Christmas spelled box-office drought and heaped road-weariness on players after Christmas. Attendance will be the lowest in six years, while DC operating costs (staff, electricity, etc.) are much higher than in the Salt Palace. Forbes' '94-95 budget was approved in February and did include enough to stock the club better, but then came the sale offer.
Critics say Jazz people were novices at dealing with the IHL and NHL, and that resulted in the poor scheduling. Howells bristles at that, saying he has a letter of commendation from one league member and was urged to seek IHL board chairmanship by another board member.
"We had difficult schedules all the time," scoffs Bob Francis, an Eagle for nine years. As player and coach, he made scores of nightmarish trips. "You try to make it into a positive," he says.
"The way they operated," says Francis from St. John, New Brunswick, where he coaches the Calgary Flames' farm team that moved out of here last year, "I didn't have any problems with it. I had a very good relationship with Howells, and they always treated us in a first-class manner. He (Miller) allowed us to operate in a proper way. I've got nothing but positive things to say; I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and bash Larry," Francis said.
"Our working arrangement," says Calgary assistant GM Al Coates, "was totally perfect. The payments were on time. The bookkeeping was right."
Insiders rue the loss of the Flames. That was a mistake, though it was hard to have known it at the time. The Flames, said Howells, wanted a 240 percent increase in their affiliation fee for this season. "I couldn't swallow it," he says. It hurt the Eagles to try to save money. In the months between the January impasse with the Flames and signing the Islers, IHL fees increased so fast Salt Lake spent as much (around $600,000) to get the Isles, who provided 16 players, as it would have to keep the Flames, who'd have provided a full team and maintained continuity of a six-year relationship.
Despite high air fares, hotel rates and salaries, critics don't believe Miller's claim of $3.62 million lost. They say he made millions in expansion franchise fees. The last IHL entrants paid $4 million. Several sources, though, put Miller's share of expansion fees at less than $1 million but more than $600,000. Howells says that's factored into the losses.
There's the charge that Miller and Howells didn't care about the Eagles and they never visited with players or showed them they were wanted. Many current and former players say it makes a difference. "I understand it's a business, but I also think it's a people business," said one. Another said owner interest creates attitude, and that's the difference in championship play.
"No, it's an excuse," said another. "When you're battling in the corner, you don't think about that."
Miller said he's tried to learn the game, and he and Howells stayed out of the way because they weren't hockey folk. "He felt bad he wasn't there all the time," says Francis. "He was very upfront with the fact he didn't have a great feel for the game."
And there's the Delta Center. Less homey than the Salt Palace, its hockey sightlines are atrocious. Many fans quit coming. "If the Salt Palace was still here, hockey would still be here," says Art Teece, the man with the deepest heartache of all tonight.
Teece lost big because of the travel subsidies he had to pay to join the IHL. In the CHL, the Eagles made money. "If I'd walked away at the end of the CHL," Teece says, "I'd have had my retirement money." In the IHL, he lost close to $1 million and would have entered 1989-90 owing Calgary its player fee if Miller hadn't bought the club. Before the sale Calgary worried it'd have to take over and wasn't pleased by the thought. "I never lost it before, did I?" Teece snorts, but he admits, "With the Delta Center, I probably couldn't have kept it going."
"We never missed a payroll, but I can't tell you how Art did it," says Mike Runge, long-time PA announcer and GM in the last Teece/first Miller years. "The magic of this whole thing is, how did it last this long? It was like smoke and mirrors," Runge says.
For Miller, the smoke parted, and he made a decision most businessmen would make when the offer was presented.
"The emotional side of it is tough," says ex-star Doug Palazzari, "but unless you're the one writing the checks, I don't know that you have the right to (criticize). That's how I look at it."
Adds ex-player Dave Hrechkosy, "He looks like the bad guy now, but one thing people have to remember is that Larry was able to spearhead things and keep it going when nobody else could."