I’m proud that Larry didn’t quit. He went to Binghamton and coached for four years. He then made it back to coach the Whalers and was still in Hartford when I left in 1988. Larry has gone on to have a great career. He worked for the Rangers and then became GM of St. Louis. He swallowed his pride and became a top-notch hockey guy.
So, with Emile Francis and Ron Francis both joining the organization, things were getting better.
A Taste of Hollywood
Not long after this, Bill Minot sent me a movie script called Flight of the Navigator. Bill was one of my best friends, another guy that I knew well growing up in the summers in Massachusetts.
Bill had been a very successful investment banker but decided to leave the business and go out to Hollywood to work in marketing. He was one of the pioneers in product placement. It was a simple, yet new, concept. You’re making a movie that’s going to be seen by millions of people, and if there’s a scene where a guy’s drinking a beer, you go to Coors and ask if they’ll pay to have the actor drink their product. If they won’t . . . the guy’s drinking Schlitz.
Bill had a Whaler connection from more than a decade earlier. It was just before Christmas in our first year in the WHA and we needed a Santa Claus for the home game over the holidays. Bill is a big boy — think John Candy — yet a gifted athlete despite his size. Bill never played hockey, but he felt he could handle skating around that rink with ease. After the first period, he was meant to skate around the ice surface in his Santa suit with a sack full of candy and throw the goodies into the crowd.
There was no separate place for him to change, so he had to do it with the players in their dressing room. Teddy Green and the guys all got a huge kick out of Minot’s humor and spirit. He was the funniest person I knew, very smart and very quick-witted.
When Bill came out in the Santa suit, I was sitting right in the seats by the vomitory. Bill looked nervous, and his knees were wobbling. I asked him if he was all right, and he replied, as he eyed the crowd of 12,000 fans, “How did I ever get into this?” Then he gets out there, and realizes it’s hard to skate, especially in a Santa suit with a sack of candy over your back. But he did it, to the joy of all the fans and the players who actually made the effort to come out and watch him.
Like everyone else in Hollywood, Bill really wanted to be a producer, and had once said to me that if he ever came across a script which he felt was good, would I help finance the development of it? I said sure I would.
Bill then sent me Flight of the Navigator, to this day one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. It was a clever science fiction piece about a young boy who is abducted by aliens and becomes a pilot for their spacecraft.
Bill needed $50K for the option on the script and a rewrite. I made the investment and we doubled our money. We got a presentation credit for the movie, but if I knew then what I know now, I would have asked for a producing credit.
So now I had a taste of the movie business, yet I was still fully immersed in the hockey business. The careers I’ve chosen to pursue are difficult. That doesn’t mean that other careers aren’t difficult as well, but my business-life choices are incredibly visible, and since they seem like “fun,” everyone thinks they are easy and they “could do that too.” Everybody thinks they can put a sports team together, and everybody thinks they can do a movie. The problem is that everybody wants to do it, so both of these businesses become very competitive.
There would be significant crossovers between my hockey life and movie life. For instance, after my taste of film with Minot, I then acquired two additional film projects with my friend John Bassett. Later on, it was via hockey that I met Phil Anschutz, who owned the L.A. Kings and several MLS soccer teams. Phil, Karen and I became partners in a company called Crusader Entertainment. When we were cleaning up a multitude of legal issues as part of the NHL merger, our lawyer in California, Stuart Benjamin, and I developed a great friendship and partnered a few film deals of our own together. We did Billy Galvin, we were part of the development of Hoosiers, and later on we’d do more films together.
And Billy Galvin was very helpful in bringing Karen Mulvihill into my life.
Karen
Karen Mulvihill came into my life in the summer of 1985, when she was working for the NHL as a local marketer for the next year’s All-Star Game. Two years earlier, I’d bid to bring the 1986 NHL All-Star Game to Hartford, and we landed the game for February 4, 1986, a Tuesday. (It wasn’t on the weekends back then, because weekends were too valuable to lose from the regular-season schedule.)
Hartford had hosted the WHA All-Star Game in 1977, but the NHL game was a much bigger event and planning had to start about 10 months in advance. Technically, it was an NHL event hosted by the league as well as the local team. Therefore the NHL hired some local staff to work on the project, and Karen was hired to work out of our offices as the assistant to the NHL coordinator, George Ducharme. Today, it is dramatically different — the NHL has a full-time staff to organize their events.
Karen’s Mom and Dad, Mary Jane Mulvihill and Jim Mulvihill, grew up in Connecticut. Jim was head of the UConn Health Center, a huge local hospital, and the Children’s Cancer Fund at the hospital was the Whalers’ designated charity. So we also made it the charity for the All-Star Game.
Karen was young, 21, and I was 42 at the time. Twice her age. But as my good friend Bill Minot would joke, I was immature and she was mature, so it evened things out.
It was really kind of strange the way we started dating.
Jim Mulvihill said to me, “Karen’s so glad to be working at the Whalers, but did you know that she loves the theater and would probably enjoy learning more about what you’re doing in the movies,” or something to that effect.
That gave me my opening to get to know Karen. When I first met her at the Whalers office, I just had this feeling that she would become a permanent part of my life, so I saw my opening and took it. I offered to bring her up to Boston, where we happened to be filming Billy Galvin.
I told Jim, “If Karen would like, I have to go up there a few times and she could go up with me and spend a day on the set.” So that’s what happened, and one thing led to another and we became a couple. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Karen’s family are really devout Catholics, and here their older daughter is going out with a guy who’s twice her age and divorced with three children. Scotty was 19, Becka would have been 16, and Howdy Jr. would have been 13. So it was an adjustment for all of us.
Karen and I knew instinctively that we were meant for each other. So even though it might have been awkward at times, we were adamant that we wouldn’t hide the relationship. We needed to get people as comfortable with it as we were.
We have many bonds, but the strongest is our friendship with each other. We genuinely enjoy being together. We met via the office, so it is natural for us to work together.
After the All-Star Game was done, we got engaged and started to go to L.A. more and more frequently. Karen was able to get a manager and an agent out there, and over time she has had 10 or 11 roles in movies and TV. In some of the movies she had the second female lead. In Sudden Death — a movie that Karen wrote the treatment for and we shot in Pittsburgh — she opens the movie as an ESPN producer directing the telecast.
I marvel at the ease with which Karen was able to do the acting roles. It’s not easy. When you watch a movie as a fan, all you see is what is put on the screen, but when the film is being made there are hundreds of people around behind the camera. Karen had some terrific training — she was in classes with Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and some other young actors who became stars. It’s important to realize, though, that not everyone can just walk in and sign up for that kind of training. You have to audition and show talent; it is very competitive. Then Karen worked with the Groundlings, a famous improv group.
We were married on October 17th, 1987, in a true family wedding
. Karen’s sister Kristen was her maid of honor, her brother Jason was the ring bearer and my son, Howard Jr., was my best man. My other son, Scott, was an usher. That hockey season, we spent more time in Los Angeles, as Karen was acting and I was producing films.
We bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, on Blue Jay Way. We bought it from Frank Valli of the Four Seasons, and it was also the house that the Beatles rented when they did their song “Blue Jay Way.” It was a great house with a drop-dead view. We were going back and forth from the west to the east. I was still the president and managing general partner of the Whalers, but I was really starting to put my foot into the film business, and I knew I was getting a bit bored back in Hartford.
Moving On
It was the 1985–86 Whalers team that turned around our string of missing the playoffs. That was a great team, with Dave Tippett, Kevin Dineen, Joel Quenneville, Johnny Anderson, Ronnie Francis, Sylvain Turgeon, the tandem of Mike Liut and Stevie Weeks in net and a really good, solid coach in Jack Evans. That was an exceptional group of guys on and off the ice. Emile Francis had hired Jack when he came to Hartford. Jack was a quiet, soft-spoken fellow, but when he played he was a classic NHL tough guy.
On the Sunday two days before the All-Star Game, we played at home against Washington, and NHL people had started flocking into town that day, so we had a lot of them at the game. We went ahead 4–1 but wound up losing 5–4 when Washington scored four goals toward the end of the third period. It was our fourth loss in a row, and it was a devastating one. Of course, many of the early arrivals for the All-Star Game witnessed it, and I’m thinking, “There is no hockey god.”
Thankfully, the All-Star Game was a great success. And shortly thereafter we started a 14–7–2 run to the end of the season that put us into fourth place, just three points out of second, and into the playoffs. It was during this streak, when I was in the locker room congratulating the players after a win, that John Anderson noticed my Gucci loafers and asked where he could get a pair. I foolishly said that if the team made the playoffs, I would buy every one of the guys a pair — not really thinking that that was something I would have to “make good on.” Suffice it to say I was out several grand — but the guys had new shoes for the playoffs.
Quebec, Edmonton and Winnipeg also got in. It was the last time for the next 13 years that all the WHA franchises would make the NHL playoffs.
We beat Quebec in three straight games in the preliminary round, which turned out to be, amazingly, the only NHL playoff series ever won by the Whalers. In the next round we played the Canadiens, who had decided to use the rookie Patrick Roy in goal. Wise choice, but we beat them 1–0 in game six in Hartford to force a seventh and deciding game in Montreal two nights later. At this point, hockey support in Hartford was at a fever pitch. The whole city and state were passionately behind our team. Unfortunately, in a great seventh game, Claude Lemieux scored for Montreal in the sixth minute of overtime to eliminate us 2–1, and the Canadiens went on to win a surprise Stanley Cup.
We finished first in the Adams Division the next year but lost to Quebec in the first round, part of a seven-year run in which the Whalers made the playoffs every spring.
But I wasn’t in Hartford for the last four of those.
As I mentioned, the ’80s were hockey’s Renaissance Years. We had solved the war between the two leagues and many teams were now profitable. The corporate partners felt that now that the team was making money, it was time to sell. For them, their investment had been a civic gesture to revitalize the city. Now that had finally happened, and they felt their “job” was done. Downtown Hartford was booming. It was great fun to see it and to be an integral part of it.
I was instructed to find a buyer, or buyers, and to generate the maximum possible return for the partners.
As I’ve previously articulated, Don Conrad, the CFO of the Aetna, was instrumental in the Whalers coming to and staying in Hartford, and in helping me effectuate the merger. Therefore Don felt some sort of entitlement to an inside track on the acquisition of the team when it came time to sell it. This, coupled with the fact that he wanted to leave the Aetna, put me in a very difficult position.
Don actually came to me to see if I wanted to be part of his bid. But if I did, he would assume my role as managing general partner, and I would have a secondary role. Since I was the person who gave birth to the franchise (granted, with the help of others), it would have been difficult for me — and frankly not too good for Don — to agree to his plan. I also felt that my first responsibility was to all the partners, including the Aetna, which owned 35 per cent of the team. It was my job to represent them all and to do my very best to see that they received a fair return for all of the money they had invested into the team over time.
I made it clear to Don that I was in a tough situation, and that while he had done a lot for me and the franchise, it was my duty to represent all the partners.
Don then found a money partner in a local real estate investor named Richard Gordon. They came in with an offer of $19 million, which I took to my executive committee, but with the recommendation that they not accept it because I felt it was too low. It was not a fair price. The partners told me that I had their support and to keep working to get us an offer that reflected fair market value and the investment they’d made.
That was the point where Don and I had a serious rift, because I would not support his bid. I was then able to find another bidder to compete with him, generating what ended up being a very fair price of $33 million. That was the largest purchase price, ever, for an NHL team at that point in time. And in the end the buyer was Don Conrad and his new partner, Richard Gordon (although shortly thereafter, Gordon and Conrad had a partner dispute and Gordon bought Conrad out).
My Whaler experience was now at an end. We had taken the dream of a new team in a new league that we acquired for $25,000, and we had sold it for $33 million as a profitable NHL franchise. We had been instrumental in the resurgence and revitalization of a city and community that desperately needed something. We made an impact on and off the ice, and to this day the Hartford Whaler brand lives on.
My children grew up there, and Karen and I met there, so I was sad to leave but at the same time I was ready to leave. I was prepared for new challenges and new adventures.
I feel great pride when I look back on the Whaler experience. I would be the first to acknowledge that there were certain decisions I made that were impulsive, yet overall I was pleased with the job I had done. When the sale was officially approved by the NHL in the summer of 1988 and the power was transferred from my hands and the hands of the corporate partners to the Gordon/Conrad interests, I felt they were taking over a team that was poised for great success in the ’90s.
John Ziegler would frequently use the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but sadly, the new ownership of the Whalers did not heed that concept. Within a very few years they undid everything we had worked so hard to achieve in the ’70s and ’80s. On the hockey end, they fired Emile Francis and traded Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson, Dave Tippett and others. On the business end of the franchise, they eliminated Bill Barnes, Phil Langan and Mark Willand and almost the entire ticketing staff. They even eliminated the Whaler Store, which had become a gathering point not unlike a community’s general store. They turned the store over to an outside firm, thereby getting rid of Mike Reddy and Joan Hayes, who had been with the organization since day one. “Brass Bonanza,” the song played after every Whaler goal, was eliminated.
The new group completely missed the point of what the Whalers stood for. The team started to lose its heart and soul, and therefore the solid fan base built up over the decades began to erode. Ironically, when the team was in corporate hands it was not run like a corporate team, but when the team transferred ownership to two individuals, it became more like a corporate team. A few people, who should have known better, did not advise Gordon well, and all
the good which was done in the ’70s and ’80s was undone in a short period of time. The franchise would then be allowed to move to Carolina, which was a great crime.
Richard Gordon was the one who ended up selling the franchise to Pete Karmanos, who then moved the franchise to North Carolina in 1997. I don’t think it was Karmanos’s original intention to move the team, but I also don’t think that Hartford was where he wanted to be. He had intense negotiations with the City and with the State of Connecticut, and both sides stubbornly dug in their heels. So when Carolina made Karmanos a better offer, he moved the team there. Over the years, I have grown to really respect Pete Karmanos. He has given a tremendous amount to minor hockey and junior hockey, and he has invested a fortune in the Carolina Hurricanes.
I would like to jump ahead a few years for a moment, to April 13th, 1997, and say that it was incredibly sad for Karen and me to watch that final game played on Hartford Civic Center ice with the players, led by Kevin Dineen, raising their sticks to salute the Hartford fans. This team should never have been allowed to leave. In the best of times, it is extraordinarily hard to bring a major-league sports franchise to a city, but even harder to bring it to a small city like Hartford. It was truly the end of an era.
Since the departure of the team, Hartford has been on a steady decline, going from a lively and bustling place to a city that is deathly silent.
In 1988, when we left Hartford, the sport of hockey was thriving. The ’80s were very prosperous for the NHL. The Islanders and then the Oilers were ruling on the ice, and teams were making money.
Looking back on the Hartford Whalers, I take great pride in the fact that we achieved so much success on and off the ice. Merchandise sales were through the roof, and the logo won many awards for creativity and design. The Whaler Booster Club is still active and vibrant. Hartford hosted not only a WHA All-Star Game, but also an NHL All-Star Game as well as a Whaler-CCCP game and Canada Cup games. We also hosted the Hollywood celebrity team on several occasions, the most memorable of which was the game in which actor Alan Thicke broke his nose.
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