The owner of the Minnesota Wild looks back at the past year, the impact of COVID on the NHL, and what the future holds for the league going forward. Written by W. Graeme Roustan.
AS THE 2020-21 SEASON has come to an end with the crowning of a Stanley Cup champion, Craig Leipold reflects and shares his experiences on the past 16 months, a time unlike any other in the history of the NHL. In this candid Peer-to-Peer conversation with W. Graeme Roustan, the owner and publisher of The Hockey News, we learn what was going on behind the scenes from Leipold, a father of five boys, husband, and owner and No. 1 fan of the Minnesota Wild.
W. GRAEME ROUSTAN: How have you been?
CRAIG LEIPOLD: I’ve been great. Other than the last 16 months have been a little hard, being an owner, and even more importantly a hockey fanatic, it’s been tough to live through all of this. Shutting the league down for as long as we did, and playing without fans. But the best news is there’s light at the end of this tunnel. We’re expecting we’re going to be at 100 percent come October.
WGR: Let’s go back in time to March 12 when Gary Bettman made the announcement that the NHL was going to pause the season. What was your first reaction?
CL: I can remember as if it was yesterday. I’m in my office in Saint Paul, Minn., I’m looking out the window, it’s a pretty day, and I get a call from Gary, and he says, “We’re shutting it down as of right now.” And I go, “Gary, are you serious?” I’m looking at the Saint Paul Hotel, and in that hotel are the Vegas Golden Knights. In fact, the referees are starting to walk over to the arena, and I’m selfishly a half game out of the top eight in our conference. I’m just like, “Oh my god, there’s so many things going through my mind, can’t we wait until tomorrow? At least let us play the game, we’re all here, everything’s happening, we bought the food, it’s all going.” So, there were so many things happening. And it took me a while to come to grips with all of that, and the suddenness of that moment made me think, “What is going to happen in the future, what if we can’t finish the season?” It was a terrible, sad day. And then, of course, I had to make a ton of phone calls, and everyone’s asking me the same questions that I was asking Gary. It was not one of the happy moments of my life. It was one of those times where I hung up the phone and I’m going, “My god, what is going to happen to the future of hockey? And how are we going to finish this out?”
WGR: When you got that call, and it was a pause, the reason it was a pause was because no one knew whether it would be a week, two weeks, a month, it was really an unknown. Did you have any thought about how long the NHL would be off?
CL: That’s all I was thinking. Gary was very specific wanting to use the term “pause,” nothings canceled, we expect to replay these games, we just don’t know when. So use the word “pause” and we’ll do everything we can once…at the time, we weren’t even using the word “pandemic”…but once this “heavy flu” gets by, we will be ready to go. So that’s all I was hoping, the pause to me was a week or two, my sincere hope was to get past that and reopen the season and add another week or two onto the season.
WGR: So you had to switch gears and get your executive management team in the office. What was your first meeting with your business team like?
CL: My assistant was in the office, it’s probably one of the last times she’s been in the office. And I asked her, “Would you call Matt and Jeff and Billy and Leah, and get everybody, we’ll meet in five minutes.” And then I told them what was happening. We had Levy Restaurants come in because they had all the concession food, so everybody quickly left and got on the phones and they started to have their meetings. The dominoes started to go down, and an hour later, everything was canceled. It was done.
WGR: So you’re sitting there, you’re the owner of an NHL team, and now there’s a pandemic and there’s a pause. How do you plan the next three months or six months when you have no visibility what’s going to happen next?
CL: At that moment, it never even crossed my mind, that we wouldn’t be playing in three months. I’m thinking this can’t go on that long, we’ll get it done. I would’ve been in a very depressed state had I thought we wouldn’t be playing another game until Edmonton in the bubble. It was a hard time. It affects so many people, you realize how bad this could be to our business, to our city and our market. As I said, the domino effect really affects a lot of people.
WGR: It’s no secret that NHL owners, pretty much all of them, had to reach into their pocket to fund operations because the revenues pretty much stopped. No TV revenue, no ticket revenue, you also have a big business, which is concerts, events, which was also shut down. What’s it like to sit there and say, “I have no revenues coming in, and I’ve only got expenses.”
CL: It took us a while to get to that point, but we had to get there. The realization was very humbling, “How is this going to work?” No revenue, the arena business is gone. We have a convention center that we manage, that’s gone. Obviously our NHL team, our AHL team. We had zero revenue overnight, and we’re still paying hundreds and hundreds of people until we can figure out what was needed, which took months. I would say that it really helped us when the NHL, as other leagues did, they lined up loans that the league could make and loan money to the teams at low interest rates. When (the pause) started, we’re thinking, “How are we going to fund this cash loss?” And the cash loss was going to be in the $50- to $60-million range. Fortunately, we had the Seattle money that was coming in as an expansion franchise. That was around $20 million. We had access to a $30-million loan that the league had set up. So immediately you can say, “All right, I understand how we’re going to survive this.” Then we just had to hope as we’re figuring this out last year, surely we’ll be playing by January, February or March. So, our budget had no people in the arena starting in October, but by later in the season, in February, March, April, we we’re budgeting for 100 percent, and that turned out to be wrong, and that was still zero. The good news is that we survived, the best news is that we love our team, and we’re going to be playing at 100-percent capacity come October.
WGR: Let’s talk about the future. We all know what’s gone on with the pandemic and where we are today, the talk right now is coming back, next season we’re going to be back, the arenas will be open, full audiences. What are you doing now to prepare for getting back to normal?
CL: It’ll never be back to the way it was. We know that. We also know that through questionnaires and polls that we do with our customers, that now, security and safety is very high on their list. We aren’t going to stop having all the hand sanitizers available, the seat sanitizers. We’re going to have full arenas, but they’re going to see different things that we’re going to continue to do that we now think is not only safe, but good business. And we want our customers to physically see that we are doing everything we can to stay away from any pandemic issue that could come in the future. We need to make sure our fans are secure and safe all the time and we want to make sure they feel that way.
WGR: You must be excited about getting back to the arena yourself. You’ve been kind enough over the years to invite me to watch games with you. I’ve watched games with a lot of owners, but you’re the only one I won’t sit beside during the game because your elbows are flying and your arms are flying all over the place. You’re a passionate owner, am I describing you accurately?
CL: You’re describing me really well. I’m at a game, not as an owner, but as a fan. I don’t really do work, so the people who are in my suite like you are my friends and my buddies, not my customers. I’m not good at talking to customers. If we happen to win the game 7-0, fine, I’ll be the best guy, “Customers are great, come on in.” But I just love watching the games. I do have my idiosyncrasies when it comes to exactly where I sit, the same seat all the time, nobody to my left, nobody to my right, nobody in front of me, I’ve got a little TV there. It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve been able to experience that. We’re all so anxious to get it going.
WGR: I have to say that out of all the times that I’ve been in your suite with you, I’ve never been to a game where the Wild have lost. Every game I’ve gone to, there’s been a win. I know that’s why you keep inviting me back because I deliver wins. I don’t want to be there when you lose, I really don’t. I know this very happy-go-lucky Craig guy, but I don’t want to see you in a losing situation.
CL: It’s not a pretty thing. It’s not the nice Craig that comes out. It’s the fan committed to winning in everything. Fortunately, our record at home is fantastic, so I’m usually in a good mood when we’re done.
> Watch the full Q&A with Craig Leipold at TheHockeyNews.com/P2P