I almost became the CEO of the Toronto Maple Leafs on two occasions.
The first was in the mid-80s when I got the idea that my client Anne Murray would be the perfect owner of the tram. She was a rabid hockey fan, lived in Toronto, and was an international superstar. On the other hand, Harold Ballard, who controlled Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. (the public company that owned the Leafs) was despised by most Leaf fans and cared only about making money rather than building a winning team, I floated the idea at one of the meetings that Anne, her manager, Leonard Rambeau, and I regularly held. Anne loved the idea and Leonard didn’t care as long as I was prepared to run the company.
I had already gotten a commitment from a major Canadian bank to lend Anne the money to buy Ballard’s shares provided they were pledged as security. I called Harold and said I wanted to meet with him. He suggested we have lunch at the Hot Stove Lounge in Maple Leaf Gardens.
Others had approached Harold about buying his shares but had been summarily rebuffed. However, I had a plan I thought he might like. We would keep him on to manage the building (at which he was very adept), allow him to keep his office, his private end-zone bunker (where he sat for events), and his apartment at the Gardens. I also knew he was a staunch Anne Murray fan. But when I met with him, Ballard confessed that due to loan covenants involving his bank and Molson Breweries he couldn’t sell his shares without their approval. Because Molsons knew that their main competitor, Labatts, was a client of mine, there was no way they would approve a sale to an entity with which I was involved. So that was that.
My next brush with heading up the Gardens came shortly after Ballard’s death on April 11, 1990. Steve Stavro, a well-known Toronto businessman, Don Giffen, another Toronto businessman, Thor Eaton (of the famous Eaton merchandising family), and Don Crump, Ballard’s financial advisor for many years, were charged with administering his estate.
Stavro’s lawyer, Brian Bellmore, and the Gardens’ lawyer, Dave Matheson, are both good friends of mine. It was probably Brian who suggested I would be a good CEO of Maple Leaf Gardens Ltd. As I had never met Giffen or Eaton, Stavro suggested I have lunch with them so they could, as he put it, “get to know you a bit.” So it was back to the Hot Stove Lounge for lunch with Stavro, Giffen and Eaton, which was quite an interesting experience.
Giffen fell asleep about half-way through his steak sandwich. Eaton asked me what I thought about Cliff Fletcher as a possible CEO for Maple Leaf Gardens, to which I replied, “You mean the guy who traded Brett Hull?” (Probably not the answer he wanted to hear.) I also told Eaton that the horrible Hull trade notwithstanding, Fletcher would be fine as general manager of the Leafs, but he had no credentials whatsoever to run a public company, which Maple Leaf Gardens was. At that point Giffen woke up (he had probably just been dozing because he immediately picked up the thread of the conversation) and said that Fletcher had already signed a deal making him both GM and President of the Leafs. Because the deal had been made without consulting Stavro, he was livid and suggested that I still join the Gardens as an equal to Fletcher but without any authority over the hockey team. That would have made me an arena manager, just as I would have had Ballard be if the Anne Murray purchase had gone ahead. I said “thanks, but no thanks,” and went back to my office.