Islanders players had a chance to peek behind the curtain of Spano’s concocted lifestyle on April 1, when the team came to town to play the Dallas Stars and Spano invited them for dinner at his house.18 Spano lived with his wife Shelby in University Park, a tony north Dallas suburb. Spano said their Tudor home was worth $3 million that he paid in full— another lie, since he was actually paying off a $1.8 million mort-gage and owed $85,000 in property taxes. On the night the Islanders came over, the Spanos put on a show, bringing in a ten- piece band to serenade the players as they dined on Mexican food.19 Most of the team was impressed. Bryan Smolinski wasn’t. “I’m thinking, For a guy that’s got over $200 million, I was expecting a little more. I’m like, ‘This is bullshit.’ I said, ‘This is not happening.’ He didn’t have really any cars. He didn’t really have anything. He just had a real nice house, probably no different than what I’m living in now. Probably less.
And I’m thinking, Man, isn’t this awkward? And everyone’s trying to find the light. They’re like, ‘Man, this is pretty sweet.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s not. This sucks.’”20
Only a week after dining with the players, Spano faced the deadline to close the deal. In an anxious effort to drum up $165 million in a matter of weeks, Spano amazingly managed to persuade Fleet Bank to give him an $80 million loan, using the team, its assets, and the cable television rights as collateral. Next, he negotiated to pay off the remaining $85 million in five annual installments of $16.8 million.
That meant he had to scrounge up just the first payment, $16.8 million, in order to close the purchase on April 7.21 Spano had a few possible options to secure quick cash. He sought investors to pay up front for the new arena he envisioned for the Islanders, and he pursued a loan from Cablevision, which was negotiating for the Islanders’ television rights.22 Neither effort came through by the closing date. Short $16.8 million, Spano devised one final scheme, concocting a letter that appeared to show confirmation from a London bank that it would wire 170
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$16.8 million to Pickett. He handed off the letter to his lawyers, who did not recognize it as a forgery and assured Pickett that the money was on its way. Pickett, eager to finish the transaction, closed the deal.
Spano officially became the Islanders owner.23
As the weeks wore on, Spano never made the $16.8 million payment he owed Pickett. He once delivered a personal check for the amount but stopped payment the next day, before Pickett could deposit it. On another occasion he wrote a check drawn on what he described as his most profitable company, and it bounced. Spano stayed up late at night, wondering how he could buy more time. He eventually decided to play around with zeros. First, Spano offered to wire $5 million to Pickett in good faith, only to send $5,000. Then he said that he had sent $17
million, when he had actually wired $1,700. Frustrated over Spano’s inability to pay, Pickett sought an arbitration proceeding, asking the NHL to return the Islanders to him. In a letter asking for the proceeding, Pickett’s lawyer listed the many absurd excuses that Spano had used—
meddling by the NHL and his own attorneys, the faulty work ethic of bankers, an incompetent associate at a London law firm, the inability of banks to process routine wire transfers, the lack of integrity of the federal wire system, errors by the Internal Revenue Service, “ravenous”
South Africans, a bomb threat by the Irish Republican Army that held up the London Underground, and acts of God. Finally, Pickett’s lawyer noted that Spano lied about an offshore trust with more than $100
million in assets. “If this trust does not exist,” the letter wondered,
“is there any substance at all to Mr. Spano?”24 It was a good question.
Even as he was trying to buy more time, Spano kept up his appearance as the Islanders owner. When he met with broadcaster Stan Fischler in May, Spano asked for a curious favor: the supposed multimillion-aire wanted Fischler to use his connections to get him free Rangers playoff tickets. Fischler was stunned. “I’m thinking to myself, He’s asking me? This guy owns the team! I said, ‘You know what’s the best thing to do? Call up Neil Smith, the [Rangers] GM. I’m sure he’ll be able to take care of you.’ After I left, I said, ‘What the hell is this?’”
While telling the story years later, Fischler said that Spano was not the sugar daddy he made himself out to be. Spotting some cheap 171
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sugar packets on a table, Fischler picked them up and said, “That’s the kind of sugar he was.”25
Although people in the know suspected Spano could not afford to buy the Islanders, the fan base remained unaware about any snags in the deal for almost three months after the closing. The first red flag popped up at a meeting of the NHL Board of Governors on June 25, when the Islanders were represented by their general counsel and an alternate governor, marking the first time since February that Spano did not attend. A subsequent story in Newsday revealed Spano’s missed payment to Pickett and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman ordering Spano not to touch team assets. Playing off a famous line from the movie Slap Shot— in which a hockey player asks management, “Who own da Chiefs?”— the article wondered, “Who owns the Islanders?”
Pickett said he did not know, but he took issue with the characterization of the breakdown in the sale as a dispute between himself and Spano. “The term ‘dispute’ is really a poor choice of words,” he insisted.
“There is no dispute. He owes me money and hasn’t paid it.”26
By early July, Spano was unsure who owned the team anymore. “Am I still the owner of the Islanders?” he asked a reporter. “Right now, I’m in limbo.” His money problems opened up the entire organization to questions about its finances. Newsday reported, only half- jokingly, that the Islanders were managing to pay their utility bills at Nassau Coliseum and had not sold off their furniture or the pictures of championship teams. “Everything was so positive here,” Nystrom told the newspaper. “Now we don’t know.”27
The matter was settled soon after. On July 11 the NHL announced that Spano agreed to relinquish his ownership of the Islanders in exchange for a guarantee that Pickett would not sue him. Spano released a statement saying the decision was “right for my loved ones,” even though it meant “giving up my first love, hockey.”28 Ten days later, authorities came to Dallas to arrest Spano, only to learn he had absconded to the Cayman Islands. There was brief speculation that he might never return.29 Spano did fly back to New York, on the advice of his attorney, and he was arraigned on charges of bank and wire fraud in a courtroom just blocks from Nassau Coliseum.30 After 172
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a prosecutor dramatically accused Spano of weaving “a tangled web of lies and broken promises,” Spano changed his mind about pleading not guilty and cut a deal.31 From there his life quickly unraveled. His wife divorced him and sold the Dallas house where they once hosted the Islanders players. He moved to Philadelphia, where he developed a drug addiction and tried to pay his rent with a bad credit card, bounced checks, and wire transfers, so his bail was revoked and he was sent to a correctional facility. In 2000 he was sentenced to seventy- one months in prison for the charges stemming from the aborted Islanders purchase.32 After his release in 2004 he returned to Ohio to start another company, where he again committed fraud. He was sentenced to an additional four years.33
As the scandal unfolded Milbury worried that Spano’s misdeeds would overshadow the Islanders’ progress in the fisherman era. “We’re all a little edgy about how this might affect our fans,” Milbury said. “It would be a shame if the way we finished the season and the way we positioned ourselves is being lost in this.”34 His fears were well founded.
More than any other figure, Spano had become the face of the Islanders in the midst of a daring rebrand. Now he was headed to prison. “My reputation went from savior to devil,” Spano admitted.35 Everything that he had promised, from the acquisition of superstar players to the construction of a new ar
ena that would keep the team on Long Island, was off the table. The franchise would revert to the absentee owner who had overseen its decline, a man that Newsday described as “roughly as popular as the ill- conceived fisherman.” A headline in the 7th Man was even harsher toward Pickett: “Spano’s Scheme Collapses, So the Ogre Returns!” The newsletter also called him the NHL’s version of Dracula, “back to resume sucking the franchise dry.”36
The dramatic turn of events was bound to affect how the jerseys would be remembered. Long Islanders had pinned their hopes on Spano, and reading their excited reactions years later, with the knowledge that Spano was a fraud all along, is heartbreaking. “Things are getting good again,” Louis Eterginoso, a season- ticket holder since the Islanders’ inaugural season, told the Blade in April 1997, when Spano missed his first $17 million payment. “It starts at the top and 173
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this John Spano looks like he’s going to be a tremendous owner.” In June, as Spano was forging documents and making excuses for his inability to pay, the 7th Man rejoiced, “A new day is finally dawning!
Be a part of it! John Spano is committed to winning!”37 The 1996– 97
season had ended with electricity in the Nassau Coliseum stands, too.
Attendance averaged only 10,774 fans in the first ten home games, but after Spano’s introduction, the number soared to 13,100 for the final thirty- one dates.38 Once the deal foundered, fans were devastated.
One man told a television news crew that he wanted Spano to get thirty years in prison for “the grief he’s put me through personally.”39
The 7th Man made an argument, hard to dispute, that the Islanders had the “most abused fans in sports.”40
After years out of public view Spano reemerged in 2013, agreeing to an on- camera interview for an ESPN documentary about his purchase of the Islanders. His interviewer was the film’s director, actor Kevin Connolly, best known for starring in the HBO series Entourage.
Connolly, who grew up on Long Island rooting for the Islanders of the 1980s, interspersed clips from the Spano interview with archival footage and interviews with the likes of Milbury, Gary Bettman, and the Islanders’ attorneys. Connolly was gentle in his questions for Spano, perhaps out of gratitude for his cooperation, and the documentary framed his crimes in a lighthearted and at times complimentary manner, the story of a man who cleverly overcame his inadequate finances to live out every fan’s dream of owning a favorite sports team. “They painted Spano out to be this folk hero,” said Tim Beach, the Islanders’
director of game events. “No. He was a crook. He was a crook back then, and he’s a crook now.” In the film Spano acknowledged the scam was “100 percent my fault,” and he choked up describing how his family, who put up their homes to make his $3 million bond, were “caught up in my mistakes and got hurt.” However, his final statement was more wistful than repentant. “It was everything I hoped it would be, and actually it was more. Consequences, like we said, weren’t tremendous, but it was a fulfillment of a dream, even if it was a short period of time. I mean, for four months, I owned the New York Islanders.”
In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Spano clarified, 174
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“I don’t want anybody to think I don’t have remorse or regret. I do.”41
As with many aspects of Spano, his true feelings about the scam may never be known.
In the wake of the bungled sale, the NHL reevaluated its vetting process for prospective owners.42 “We have to go back and assess the procedures so it never happens again,” Bill Daly, the NHL’s senior vice president for legal affairs, told Sports Illustrated.43 No more hearts of hockey fans would be broken by a con artist.
After the Spano deal fell apart Pickett made clear his intentions to find a new buyer. Ironically, Spano’s furious attempt to find enough money to close the sale actually raised the value of the franchise. By extending the team’s cable television deal to 2031, Spano ensured the Islanders would receive $400 million over the next thirty- four years.44 Pickett’s asking price went from $165 million with Spano to $200 million from any future suitors. He trusted the negotiations to his son Brett, who had remained on Long Island after his father left. Surprisingly, the public relations debacle with Spano, rather than scaring away potential suitors, awakened curiosity in owning the Islanders. There was interest from a group led by former Islanders star Clark Gillies and another that included Bob Gutkowski, a former president of Madison Square Garden, and Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon, co- owners of the New York Mets.45 Even Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who pumped millions into his baseball team in the Bronx, put in a call to the Picketts.46
In September the Islanders were sold for the second time in five months, this time to buyers who actually had the money to pay for the team. For $195 million the team went to a company headed by Steven Gluckstern, the chairman of a large broker- market reinsurer and a co- owner of the Phoenix Coyotes, who sold his stake in the Coyotes to make the deal. The group also included New York real estate developers Howard Milstein and Stephen Ross.47 Unlike Spano, the men came with solid financial pedigrees and experience in the sports business. Milstein was involved in serious attempts to start leagues to compete against Major League Baseball and the National Football 175
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League, while Gluckstern presided over the relocation of the Winnipeg Jets to Arizona in 1996– 97, when the Coyotes had a winning record and made the playoffs in their inaugural season.48 The men clearly had more interest in redeveloping the area around Nassau Coliseum than pumping money into the Islanders, but they also wanted to build a contending team, since 80 percent of the profit margin in the league came from playoff revenues.49 Gluckstern promised to be a hands- on owner. “Owning a sports team for me was a fantasy from when I was a young boy,” he shared in an interview years later. “There’s something powerful about being able to live out your own dreams.”50
For the Pickett family, relinquishing ownership of the Islanders was bittersweet. John Pickett had had a stake in the team since its first game in 1972, and for the past seventeen years he had been either the majority or sole owner. Over that time his relatives all became fans.
“It was incredibly hard,” said Brett Pickett. “We kept the skybox, so we kept coming to the games, but it’s very hard to let go. It was part of my life my entire life.” Yet the family patriarch, who admitted his absentee ownership hurt the franchise, was glad to have found a buyer with capital to spend on players and a new arena. On the day the deal was announced John Pickett put out a statement praising Gluckstern’s experience as a businessman and NHL team owner.51 “They were winners,” Brett Pickett remembered. “These are guys who are used to winning, and they knew that the logo needed to be the heritage logo.”52
With a deep appreciation for sports branding and a flair for show-manship, Gluckstern figured to be an entertaining owner as the Islanders moved past the fisherman era in the 1997– 98 season. He was raised in a family of intellectuals: his mother had a doctor of education degree in counseling psychology, and his father headed the Physics Depart-ment and served as provost at Amherst, the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts. Showing as much ambition as his parents, Gluckstern earned a master’s in business administration from Stanford and a doctorate in education from Amherst, and his colorful path to the owner’s box included seven years as a teacher and school administrator.53 “He is a great businessman,” the Coyotes president said at the time, “but I think he is a marketer at heart.” In Phoenix, 176
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Gluckstern faced the challenge of selling hockey in persistently warm weather. He sold the Coyotes as sports entertainment, hiring bands to perform outside the arena before all home games, installing a jumbo video screen, and regularly setting off fireworks. Gluckstern inserted himself into the promotions, too. During the Coyotes’ playoff run, the team encouraged fans to “white out” th
e arena by dressing in all white to throw off the opponents. Gluckstern showed up at his rinkside seats in a white tuxedo.54
Gluckstern’s eccentricity carried over to Nassau Coliseum. At his introductory press conference Gluckstern admitted growing up in southern Connecticut as a Rangers fan in the days before the Islanders existed. He joked to reporters, “My kids and I got together last night and burned all our Rangers paraphernalia.” It was Gluckstern’s first crack at charming fans who had learned to become suspicious of whoever occupied the owner’s box. Unlike Phoenix, where Gluckstern had to drum up interest in a new hockey market, Long Island presented the challenge of trying to win back disenchanted fans who viewed the fisherman jerseys as a turn from tradition. He became the hands- on owner that Pickett wasn’t, leaving his fingerprints on new marketing efforts. “Owners have to care about their teams for teams to be successful,” he professed years later, “and they show that in different ways.”55
The closing of the sale to Gluckstern’s group in February 1998
marked a key moment in the Islanders’ branding campaign. Although the fisherman jerseys had already been cast away, the owners responsible for the failed rebranding— including the introduction of Nyisles, the trade for Kirk Muller, the hiring of Mike Milbury, and the unveiling of the new logo— remained in charge when the 1997– 98 season began. The passing of the torch to Gluckstern and Milstein allowed the Islanders to move past the fisherman era in a way that Pickett and the Gang of Four could not. Two of the executives most associated with the rebrand, Pat Calabria and Tim Beach, left the team. At Nassau Coliseum, the announcement of the sale, and ownership’s commitment to bring “a fifth Stanley Cup” to Long Island, led the crowd to erupt with applause.56 In one of the most noticeable changes from 177
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