FROM 1996 Edition of IceHockey.com
by Steve Galichio, Hartford Correspondent
Tom Clancy couldn't have written a better script. It had action, intrigue, secret agents, mystery men, hidden agendas, unspeakable motives, and every other ingredient for a ratings-busting network movie of the week.
And in the middle, it even had a hockey team.
By now, the outline to the story of the Save the Whale campaign is well known, and no doubt the stuff of soon-to-be legends, as the charter members of the "96 Club" gather the memories to dispense to grandchildren at the Stanley Cup parade down Asylum Street decades from now.
But just so the facts don't get in the way of a good story, a rough chronology of events is in perfect order.
The primer: Peter Karmanos, Thomas Thewes, and Jim Rutherford purchased the Hartford Whalers in 1994 from the Connecticut Development Authority, a quasi-public arm of the state government, who had previously purchased the team from area businessman and village idiot Richard Gordon.
The state gave the KTR group an enormously attractive sale package in order to entice them into a feeble market, including underwriting half of up to $30 million in losses, and a sale price at five percent less than market value. In exchange, the state required, and received, a four-year commitment from the Whalers to stay in the state, after which time the owners could pay a $5-million relocation fee, the balance of their deferred sale payments (another $10.5 million), and be along their merry way.
In late October, with the Whalers atop the division with an early 4-1-1 mark, the team returned home to play the $t Louis Blues as Chris Pronger and Brendan Shanahan had their first opportunity to face their former teams.
Although few realized it at the time, the scant ten thousand attendance figure that night was the first roll of the wheels that led to the current tenuous resolution.
Following that game, as Whalers' Consultant for Business Affairs, Lou Beer, disclosed at the conclusion of the ticket drive, the Whalers went to the state of Connecticut and Governor John Rowland and, laying out losses of $11 million last season and a projection of another $20 million lost this season, asked to be let out of the remainder of their four-year contract with the state. The state and the team then came to a private agreement which would not see the eyes of the public until late March: if the region could demonstrate by a mandate of ticket sales that viable support existed for the franchise, the state would look to rework the Civic Center lease to provide to the team skybox, parking, and concession revenues that were being directed away from the Whalers in the current agreement.
But none of this was publicly known as the Save the Whale campaign kicked off.
March 27: Marketing Associates International, a Kansas marketing firm, is drafted to lead the campaign to sell 11,000 tickets. Mitch Wheeler, president of MAI, makes several token appearances in the Hartford area and then disappears down a large a prairie dog hole, never to be seen again.
March 29: May 1st set as termination date of campaign. Disbelief reigns.
April 2: The Save the Whale campaign officially kicks off. In order to entice more fans to purchase tickets, the Whalers raise ticket prices by an average of 20%, raise the deposit required to hold seats by 750%, and eliminate partial ticket plans. Russ Gregory, the team's senior VP in charge of marketing and public relations, shows his support for the campaign by putting his house up for sale. Million-dollar washout Gerald Diduck does likewise. Governor Rowland appoints Lt. Governor Jodi Rell to act as the point person for the campaign, evoking Jimmy Carter's famous line while touring Three Mile Island. "If it wasn't safe," Carter said, "I would have sent Mondale." Fritz Rell announces she will buddy up with someone to split a pair of season tickets.
April 13: The Whalers end a sixth consecutive losing season (and fourth consecutive non-playoff year) with a victory over the Boston Bruins, for the first time in roughly 1,428 games the Whalers have played against Boston. The team draw a tick under 12,000 average for the season despite the losing record and underarchiving team on the ice.
April 16: ESPN's Keith Olbermann, citing a well- trusted source, reports that the Whalers have settled a deal to move to Nashville to be announced as early as the end of the week. Despite denials by all parties, Olbermann calls the ticket campaign a ruse and stands by his story. Olbermann still hints that the deal isn't as dead as people think. Commissioner Gary Bettman, Rowland, Rell, and Rutherford all calmly deny the report. Karmanos swears (literally) in a rage that the report is untrue, that Nashville is a "cruddy market", and that he has talked to no one about moving his team.
April 17: Karmanos tells the New York Times that he has talked to the owners of the Palace at Auburn Hills about moving his team there, and that Nashville is one of the list of sites he is considering moving his team. The team holds a press conference to announce total sales of 2,131 tickets through two weeks of the campaign.
April 19: Former Whalers' owner Howard Baldwin shows his support for the ticket campaign by purchasing four season tickets for 1996-97. He also purchases an AHL team to play in the Civic Center. Just in case.
April 24: With one week to go, the Whalers announce current sales of 4,222 tickets. The first hints of an extension are leaked by Karmanos should the drive fall short of 11,000. Also, the first hints of a role reversal show through the cracks: until this point, it was generally assumed that the Whalers were the ones playing tough, In a weird twist, the Whalers leak their interest in an extension, while the state holds firm to the 11,000 figure. It's the first glimpse at the deal the state and the team outlined with each other that tentatively promised a new lease if 11,000 tickets were sold. Comments indicate that the team wants the new lease more than the last 3,000 tickets.
April 22: A press conference is held in Fairfield County with several regional executives as well as the mayors of Bridgeport and Norwalk. The intent is to mobilize the troops in the Southern portion of the state (with just a week to go in the campaign) to recapture a region long since lost by the team. With most people in that portion of the state aligning themselves with New York City rather than Hartford, the Whalers draw 1/3 the TV ratings in the New Haven market as in Hartford, and pull 81% of their season tickets from Hartford County. Major downstate corporations like BIC, Xerox, GTE, Subway, and Starter refuse to get involved. The parties at the press conference vow to reverse the trend and bring Fairfield and New Haven back into the fold.
April 25: An unidentified group of New Haven area businessmen announce plans to bring an AHL team to New Haven in defiance of the Whalers' campaign.
April 30: On the eve of the deadline, the Whalers announce a May 3rd press conference to announce the fate of the Whale. Rutherford, in a radio interview, casually mentions that he plans to start investigating other cities for the Whalers to move to. The state, reeling from the largest "I'd like to date other people" conversation ever held, holds its collective breath as Rutherford calls Bettman to ask permission to visit other cities.
May 1: Bettman says no. The state breaths again. A report leaks that 7,300 tickets have been sold.
May 3: Claiming that a decision was made only ten minutes before the scheduled press conference, Governor Rowland announces an extension until May 14th for the ticket drive to continue. 7,601 tickets have been sold, including 3,399 new sales, leaving the team with another 3,399 tickets to go to reach 11,000 in just 11 more days. The total does not include the 100 tickets promised by the Mashantucket Pequot Indian tribe, who despite making hundreds of millions of dollars per year tax free in the largest casino in the western hemisphere, couldn't afford the stamps to mail in their deposits. Casino revenues do not plummet as a result of this news. Reports surface that Rowland is willing to let the team go for a modest buyout price rather than subsidize two more years of losses and then lose the team during an election year in 1998. The two sides retreat for two weeks of lease negotiations in light of the current status of the ticket drive.
May 8: AHL President Dave Andrews announces that Hartford is an ideal market that the league would love to move into should the Whalers leave. Not to be outdone, IHL President Dave Andrews also announces that Hartford is an ideal market that the league would love to move into should the Whalers leave. The two Dave Andrews retreat into a room to argue amongst himself and share a bowl of Double Chex.
May 9: Days after Whalers' radio broadcaster Marty Howe announces his departure from the organization, Whalers' TV broadcaster Daryl Reaugh does likewise. Simultaneously, several large pieces of office furniture also announce their departure. Radio voice Chuck Kaiton announces that the Gem Jewelry ads are just too lucrative to pass up, and decides to stay.
May 9: Rowland, showing the first hint of a spine, announces that the new deadline is "somewhat artificial." Rutherford could only muster an "Mmm...interesting." in response. Speculation is that the large block of powerful area corporations and politicians who lent hands to the drive convinced Rowland that it would be in his best interests not to meekly wave the red cape as the Whalers charge out of town.
May 10: Rowland vows to "play hardball" with the Whalers.
May 14: The most explosive day of the campaign. Lease negotiations break down, with the state unwilling to commit significantly more revenues to the Whalers in light of the shortfall from the goal of 11,000 tickets, and the team unwilling to commit to a one-year extension to the current lease (through 1999, one year past election year) without having yearly out clauses. Each side makes an ass out of itself with the ensuing comments. Rell claims the Whalers have "thumbed their noses" at the state, and acted reprehensibly. She announces that she can no longer encourage people to buy tickets. Rowland, without speaking to Karmanos in person, feels "suckered" and describes the affair as a "slap in the face" to the state. It is revealed that Rowland's price tag for an early exit to the lease is $35 million dollars, which the Whalers are unwilling to pay. Karmanos' unwillingness to pay this amount (just $20 million in excess of the $15.5 million he would have to pay to leave after 1998 anyway) seems to indicate that the supposed $20-million offer from Nashville probably didn't ever exist. After the state decides to hold the Whalers to the terms of the remaining two years of the lease, Karmanos announces that the team will "go it alone," and that "the team will be gone in two years." Karmanos later amends that by saying that he meant to add "if nothing changes" at the end, and that his fingers were crossed behind his back when he said it.
May 15: The official word is given at an afternoon press conference: the Whalers would stay for two more years in keeping with their current lease, and would leave the door open to further negotiations in that time, but might have to look for ways to cut payroll in the meantime. Final ticket sales for the drive of 8,563 are announced.
So there we have it. Two months of heat, but very little light. In the end, both sides looked up and said "Hey, this really is a valid contract after all!", and continued to snarl at each other over the negotiationing table about what is the real issue in this whole campaign, a new lease for the Whalers in the Civic Center.
The ticket base has expanded by over 3,500 tickets with over four months to go until the season starts, so it isn't completely status quo. But the campaign was both won and lost on many fronts: The corporations and individuals of the state showed enough interest in the Whalers in an incredibly short period of time that the government wouldn't let them go free of charge, but not enough interest that the government was willing to open the vaults for the team in revenue concessions.
To cap it all off, the bluster shown by each side after the stalled negotiations put a significant damper on what should have been a proud moment for the people of the state, having mobilized an impressive Save the Whale campaign in such a short period of time.
Perhaps the most prophetic quote to arise out of this whole situation has inevitably long since fallen by the wayside and been lost on the principals involved. In the beginning of March, as another dismal season was winding to another disappointing close, Rutherford leaked the first hints of the ticket campaign yet to come.
"I think there's going to be a seasons tickets campaign. That's fine," Rutherford said. "But if, in fact, we think in the next little while we can sell 10,000 seasons tickets by twisting arms, the people who are twisting arms should be ashamed. Because this is what we should have done two years ago."
You're right, guys. You should be ashamed.
We would find much happiness in reviewing the past.
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