Since convincing Bill Davidson to take back a big mortgage and sell them the Tampa Bay Lightning last June, former hockey players Oren Koules and Len Barrie have been making audacious gambles in a league where gamblers usually crash and burn.
Jettisoned amidst a controversial run of hirings and firings were team president Ron Campbell, general manager Jay Feaster, head coach John Tortorella and a large group of front-office personnel, scouts and players (the most unpopular of which was fan-favourite defenceman Dan Boyle being shipped off to the San Jose Sharks).
Former first-overall NHL draft pick Brian Lawton was given his first management job as the Lightning's executive vice-president of hockey operations, and Barry Melrose was hired as head coach even though he had not been behind an NHL bench in 13 years.
In a three-month span, Koules and Barrie committed a whopping $194-million (all currency U.S.) in guaranteed contracts - nearly equalling the $206-million purchase price of the franchise.
Inside hockey circles and in media reports, they've been bashed as brash upstarts, with their financial wherewithal questioned and hockey acumen lampooned. And most of those critics haven't yet heard of the real-estate scheme that underpins the financing.
During a radio interview this month, Tortorella referred to them as a "couple of cowboys." Adding: "I have zero respect for them."
Stung by the jabs, both men dearly want to see the critics eat their words.
"With every breath I take," Koules said. "Every breath."
The Lightning owners made their fortunes in movies and real estate.
Koules, 47, who played junior hockey in the WHL and a bit in the minor leagues, made his big score in Hollywood by producing the successful TV sitcom Two and a Half Men and the Saw franchise of horror movies, which is reported to have generated $400-million in profits.
After failing to buy the Lightning a year ago in partnership with former Columbus Blue Jackets president Doug MacLean and South Florida developer Jeff Sherrin, Koules was introduced to Barrie by former NHL player Luc Robitaille. That's when the next Lightning ownership group was born.
Barrie, 39, played 184 NHL games over 12 years as a professional hockey player before making his name in real estate with the 1,300-acre Bear Mountain golf resort and housing development near Victoria.
The project, already at a reported $400-million in sales, may have potential sales of $2.5-billion.
"My biggest issue is that in all the press we got, there is this misconception that we are two guys in a candy store," Koules said. "We actually planned this down to every position, down to every player.
"We really took our time. But we keep reading we're kids in a candy store or playing fantasy hockey. It's the opposite."
They hope the on-ice moves will quickly turn the Lightning into a playoff team, which in turn sparks a surge at the gate in the Florida sun-belt market, where the club's season-ticket sales fell to 9,800 from 13,000 last season. The additional revenue is needed to make the team a consistent contender and pay off about $106-million in loans.
The sale of the Lightning, approved prior to the 2008 NHL entry draft, included 51/2 acres of waterfront land next to the St. Pete Times Forum.
Koules and Barrie plan to develop the land, although Davidson, who also owns the NBA's Detroit Pistons, never managed to get started on the project in the nine years he had the NHL team - and that was before the current crisis in the U.S. financial markets.
Similar plans to build around arenas and stadiums have been drawn up in Ottawa, Anaheim, Dallas, Phoenix and other centres with uneven success at best.
"We don't have the luxury of making enormous mistakes," Lawton said.
Neither Koules nor Barrie give the impression of being smooth boardroom operators with the knack of persuading sponsors and politicians to climb aboard, but they have a track record of taking risks and having them pay off.
For a recent interview, Koules wore a sports shirt and jeans, while his hair appeared to have been styled with a hand blender. Barrie's coiffure looked dishevelled and expensively streaked ("Mr. Frosted Hair," Koules called him), and he wore a sports jacket over a T-shirt and fashion jeans full of holes.
Koules quit his job as a commodities trader at his hometown Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1992 to make movies. He didn't know anyone in Hollywood but headed west anyway.
Finding few employment opportunities for a 31-year-old would-be producer with a Grade 10 education, he started his own production company. A few years later, Saw and its sequels followed, the latest of which Saw V "opens Oct. 24," Koules said. "Make sure you mention that."
Barrie got rich after his golf club in Victoria forced him to give up his membership when he cut down some trees to improve the view on his neighbouring property, or at least what he thought was his property.
He retaliated by buying 1,300 acres on Bear Mountain in 2001, and talking several hockey buddies, including Mike Vernon and Joe Nieuwendyk into investing. Jack Nicklaus designed two golf courses, and Barrie withstood the protests of outraged environmentalists and local citizens to open the development.
Lawton, 43, was the No. 1 pick in the 1983 NHL draft, chosen by Minnesota North Stars GM Lou Nanne ahead future stars Steve Yzerman and Pat LaFontaine.
Lawton became an agent when his playing career ended in 1993, but he had always wanted to run an NHL team. Lawton quit his job with the Octagon management company a year ago to pursue a GM job, and got hired by the Lightning after preparing a 50-page document that plotted the team's quick transformation into a contender.
Koules and Barrie call it "the manifesto" and many of their moves have come from it.
"[Koules]called me and said, 'Have you read this?' " Barrie said. "I said, 'Yeah, this guy might be a perfect fit.'
"There's stuff on the GM side that we don't want to do, but Brian really thrives on it," he said. "We make group decisions. When the puck drops, we're all accountable together because we all agreed together."
A close look at all three aspects of the Lightning deal make it hard to argue with them.
Both Barrie and Koules say the existing on-ice talent on the Lightning did not justify a last-place finish in 2007-08. They say their harshest critic, Tortorella, had a lot to do with that.
"We thought the biggest issue last year was that the coach was very divisive," Koules said. "It wasn't a solid dressing room of 20 players. To have 20 guys going in the same direction, with the amount of talent we assembled, is very important."
Hence the hiring of Melrose, who took the Los Angeles Kings to the 1993 Stanley Cup final but had stayed in the television business after he was fired two years later.
On the player side, only five of the 18 players given one-way contracts this summer spent any time with last season's team but, the management trio argues, most are under 30.
Among the older players, Vaclav Prospal, 33, is in his third go-round with the team and has a proven track record as a consistent scorer on the top line with Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis.
Veteran forwards Gary Roberts, 42, and Mark Recchi, 40, were brought in as mentors to prize 18-year-old rookie Steven Stamkos, the first overall pick in the June draft, who will play centre on the second line.
Thirty-eight-year-old goaltender Olaf Kolzig was signed to cover another gamble.
The new owners were behind a multiplayer deal in which star forward Brad Richards went to the Dallas Stars for two players, a draft pick and Mike Smith, who is being asked to solve Tampa's goaltending woes. Kolzig is here because he will be either a solid backup to Smith or the No. 1 if Smith falters.
Koules has a ready response to any questions about Smith, the former Dallas backup who was 3-10 after arriving in Tampa last February.
"There was an erroneous report on the first day of free agency that we wanted to trade Mike Smith," Koules said. "The first two calls we got were from [Stars GM]Les Jackson and [former Stars GM]Doug Armstrong. Then, we got one from [Vancouver Canucks GM]Mike Gillis, who used to be his agent.
"What's that tell you about Smith?"
Both owners spent a lot of time selling themselves and the team to the free agents they wanted to sign. They proved to be persuasive.
"They really did give me the feeling they wanted to win right away," Roberts said. "I felt with guys like Lecavalier and St. Louis, they weren't really a 30th-place team. With the addition of the other guys, I think we're a definite contender this season."
Koules and Barrie's most important sales job was on Lecavalier, 28. The franchise's first-overall pick in 1998 was impressed enough to forgo a shot at free agency at the end of this season and sign an 11-year contract extension.
"It feels like a new team," said Lecavalier, who led Tampa with 40 goals and 92 points last season. "When you get new ownership, you think about it, but these guys are just so passionate about the game, I wanted to be here."
With Stamkos between free-agent newcomers Ryan Malone and Radim Vrbata plus Lecavalier's line, the Lightning will not have trouble scoring. But questions abound about the defence, which was the worst in the league last season. The co-owners have some answers here, too.
For example, Matt Carle, who arrived in the Boyle trade, was a promising rookie for the Sharks two years ago, before a poor sophomore season made him expendable. Carle told reporters he got into a personality conflict with then-Sharks coach Ron Wilson, which affected his play.
"He is going to become an elite NHL defenceman," Melrose said of Carle.
Melrose promises a far more physical team, one that fore-checks hard and is strong in its own end.
"Everyone's picking on our defence because it's young," he said. "When I went to the Stanley Cup final, I had two 21-year-old defencemen and one 20-year-old. They played 25 minutes a night.
"Just because you're young doesn't mean you can't be great. I expect a lot from our kids."
Expectations and accountability are the two buzzwords in what Lawton calls a "no-excuses organization."
The dressing rooms, medical rooms and weight room were all renovated for the players, who also received a number of other perks. In exchange, it was made clear management expects an all-out effort on the ice.
"That was communicated very firmly this morning in our first meeting," Lawton said, the day training camp opened last week.
The men in charge of the team say turnarounds can happen quickly in a salary-cap NHL. They point to the Philadelphia Flyers, who went from last place to the playoffs last season, as an example.
However, the Flyers are deep in young talent, while not one of the Lightning's top three picks in the last five years is on an NHL roster. That's one reason Feaster was fired. They have compensated with the one-way contracts for younger players.
With such a large group of new players, the team has to meld quickly. That is why the owners agreed to send the Lightning to Europe this weekend for an exhibition tour and to open the 2008-09 NHL season in Prague against the New York Rangers.
"Getting off to a good start for this team is really important," Roberts said. "You have to get to know your teammates and this trip will help us do that and get us off on the right foot."
The owners are similarly confident about winning back fans and turning a profit, although Davidson's executives at Palace Sports & Entertainment say the Lightning only turned a profit ($3.3-million) in the 2003-04 season, when they won the Stanley Cup. In nine years, they say, the company lost $80-million.
Koules and Barrie point to the team's attendance figures, which show a steady rise from the Stanley Cup year to the top three in the NHL, culminating with an average crowd of 20,509, above capacity, in 2005-06. Despite the last-place finish in 2007-08, the Lightning were still eighth in attendance with an average crowd of 18,692.
The owners say Tampa is the best hockey market among the sun-belt franchises and a properly managed team will make money. Their season-ticket sales are down, but from July 1 to Sept. 1, after the new ownership was introduced and made their plans known, team officials say 4,100 season-ticket packages were sold, the most ever for that period. Koules said sponsorship sales are up $3-million from this point last year.
It also helps that the team has a sweet arena deal.
It manages the St. Pete Times Forum, which is one of the busiest venues in the country. The Lightning keep all the revenue from the arena and pay no property taxes. And those renovations to the dressing room and weight room were paid for with a $35-million loan from the city spread over 14 years and is specifically for the upkeep of the arena.
Other NHL teams, such as the Ottawa Senators and Phoenix Coyotes, had ownerships fail when the team was tied to a real-estate play. But the key difference here is the arenas in Ottawa and Phoenix were built in remote suburbs, years ahead of development. The Tampa rink is downtown.
As for the two plots of land next to the rink, a local real-estate lawyer who's been studying the land since Davidson bought it along with the team in 1999, thinks it will pay off nicely once the current chaos in the financial markets dies down.
Davidson never developed the land because the two businessmen who were to spearhead the project died within six months of each other and he apparently lost interest. But lawyer Ron Weaver says the plots are ideal for the luxury hotel and condominium projects Barrie has in mind for both. They are near the waterfront, the arena, and the Tampa Convention Centre, which the city wants to expand. Weaver thinks Koules and Barrie could get upward of $400-million in sales.
"Things don't happen overnight," Barrie said. "Neither one of us bought this team to expect to turn this thing around and make $30-million in one year.
"We knew this was going to be a three-to-five-year plan and we intend to stick this out."
Melrose a motivator
To find a new head coach, Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner Oren Koules turned to his friend, Luc Robitaille, who played on the 1992-93 Los Angeles Kings team coached by Barry Melrose. The Kings, led by Wayne Gretzky, lost the Stanley Cup final to the Montreal Canadiens.
"Whether you talked to Luc Robitaille, Rob Blake or Wayne Gretzky, they all said the one guy who gets everyone playing at or above their peak and going in the same direction was Barry Melrose," Koules said.
Melrose joined U.S. all-sports cable channel ESPN two years after that NHL final - and now says he's having too much fun after 13 years in a television studio to worry about those who ridiculed his appointment.
"You're so much more alive now," he said. "You're involved, you've got a dog in the hunt and that's important. I know most of those doubters and I don't really think too much of them. It's not like I have anything to prove to those guys. Most of them have never coached in their lives. And if they did, they were bad coaches."