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San Jose To Seattle In 30 Years - W. Graeme Roustan - Oct. 4, 2021 - Vol. 75, Issue. 04

ON OCT. 5, 1991, I was at the Cow Palace (called the California State Livestock Pavilion from 1941-1944) in Daly City, Calif., attending the first-ever home game of the San Jose Sharks. I had moved to San Jose in 1988 after a tip I had received from Brian O’Neill, the then vice-president of the NHL when its headquarters were based in Montreal and the president was John Ziegler.

While I was a student at Concordia University in the 1980s, I opened an ice cream and dessert parlor called Casablanca on Lucerne Road in the Town of Mount Royal. One of my employees was Sandy O’Neill, daughter of Brian, and Brian would occasionally drop by to pick up his energetic and charismatic daughter.

After winning a lottery for my U.S. Green Card, I was looking for a spot to land where I could make a difference in the hockey world. During a casual conversation about the NHL, Brian had mentioned that one day the NHL would like to return to the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s all I needed to hear, so I bought a one-way ticket and I was on my way to San Jose.

I quickly became a stock broker at a Wall Street firm, and rather than selling stocks to clients, I was out raising equity for the NHL franchise fee in 1989. It was then that I first met Randy Hahn, who was a fan founder of “NHL San Jose,” which I think was encouraged by some lawyers to change the name to “Pro Hockey San Jose,” and Brian Burke, who had come down to provide some guidance from Vancouver, where he was the VP and director of hockey operations for the Canucks.

‘Burkie’ went out of his way to assist me in my (and others’) effort and went so far as to prepare a step-by-step package on how to build a franchise from scratch. He sent it to me after he returned to Vancouver with a great cover letter, which I still have today after 30 years as a memento of an exciting time, even though the Gund brothers had the inside track all along for the Sharks.

Thirty years almost to the day later, the Seattle Kraken will play their first-ever home regular-season game at the Climate Pledge Arena, a state-of-the-art arena that is an engineering feat in and of itself. It is a far cry from the 11,000-seat Cow Palace, where you could actually smell the manure from the stables adjacent to the arena. Although Seattle will have almost twice as many people in the building than was in the Cow Palace that night 30 years ago, the noise will probably be the same, because at the Sharks’ first game the fans were out-of-control loud. It was so loud, it was as if they thought they were attending a rodeo, and, perhaps, some hadn’t got the memo, which might explain some of the cowboy hats that night.

NHL TEAM OWNERSHIP, JUST LIKE BEING AN NHL PLAYER, IS AN HONOR AND A PRIVILEGE THAT ONLY FEW PEOPLE GET TO EXPERIENCE

I wasn’t able to grab the brass ring in San Jose in 1989, in Montreal in 2009 or in Markham in 2013, but from those experiences I have a pretty good idea of how David ‘Bondo’ Bonderman, Jerry Bruckheimer, Mitch Garber and the other owners will be feeling on opening night.

Over the past 30 years, I have been successful in grabbing some other exciting hockey brass rings like Bauer, Mission Itech, The Hockey News, Christian Hockey and the only hockey stick manufacturer in Canada or the United States, which has a heritage dating back to 1847, decades before the country of Canada or the NHL came into existence, which is now known as Roustan Hockey.

NHL team ownership, just like being an NHL player, is an honor and a privilege that only few people get to experience. NHL owners, players and hockey-company owners like me all share the same ultimate responsibility, which is to leave the game in better condition than when we arrived. After all, we are all just stewards of the game we all love during the brief time that we hold these positions.

The Gund brothers were the right first owners of the San Jose Sharks, just like the Seattle Kraken owners, led by ‘Bondo’ and Bruckheimer, are. The same must be said for Art Savage, the first CEO of the Sharks, who was the right executive leader at the right time, just as Tod Leiweke is today for the Kraken.

I have had the distinct honor to have met and spent time with George Gund, Art Savage, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tod Leiweke, and there are no better stewards of the game than these four gentlemen. Just as the Sharks were in the best of hands 30 years ago, so are the Kraken today.

Thirty years from San Jose to Seattle. What a great journey it has been. Here’s to the next 30!

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