Gillett, Canadiens owner from 2001-09, dies at 87
American businessman ‘immersed himself in the Montreal community’
He was not on the list.
MONTREAL -- George N. Gillett Jr. did much more than own the
Montreal Canadiens from 2001-09, his final season monumentally kicking off
celebrations for the centennial of the storied franchise that predates the NHL.
The energetic, glass forever half-full American businessman
owned basketball’s famed Harlem Globetrotters when they actually lost a game in
1971, and he relished telling that story as much as he did any about his
greatest moments in sports and business.
The Canadiens announced Wednesday on social media that
Gillett Jr. had died at age 87.
“On behalf of the entire Canadiens organization, I would
like to extend my deepest condolences to George’s family,” Canadiens owner,
president and CEO Geoff Molson said in a statement. “George immersed himself in
the Montreal community and was appreciated by everyone in the organization. We
sincerely appreciate his contributions to the Montreal Canadiens during his
time as owner.”
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, said in a statement, “George
Gillett’s passion for the Montreal Canadiens and commitment to the city of
Montreal were demonstrated throughout his tenure as owner of the storied
franchise from 2001 to 2009. He guided the Canadiens through a significant
chapter in their history that included preparations for their Centennial
Celebration, which honored the franchise’s rich legacy and seminal place in our
game.
“George was a friend whose company I always enjoyed, whose
counsel was wise, and whose energy was contagious. His contributions to the
hockey world left an enduring mark, and his legacy will continue to be felt
throughout the game for years to come. The National Hockey League sends its
heartfelt condolences to his family and many friends.”
Born Oct. 22, 1938, in Racine, Wisconsin, Gillett Jr. became
owner of the Canadiens and Molson (now Bell) Centre on Jan. 31, 2001. Founder
of Brook Creek Management Corp., a portfolio management firm, he would own the
NHL’s most successful franchise during several huge moments in team history,
including captain Saku Koivu’s return after beating cancer on April 9, 2002,
the renaming of the team’s arena to Bell Centre on Sept. 1, 2002, and the start
of preparations for the team’s centennial season in 2009-10.
Gillett Jr. owned the Canadiens until June 20, 2009 when he
sold the team, its arena and its Groupe Spectacles Gillett
concert/entertainment arm to current owner Geoff Molson and a consortium of
investors.
I would get to know Gillett Jr. well during his tenure
holding the Canadiens’ reins, spending time with him at the arena during games,
in conversation in the team’s executive suites, even flying with him from
Montreal to Toronto on his business jet to a 2008 sports awards luncheon when
he learned that my commercial flight the morning after covering a Canadiens
game would cut my arrival too close.
He’d officially arrived in Montreal on Jan. 31, 2001, from
his base in Vail, Colorado, handing Molson Inc. $275 million Canadian for 80.1
per cent of the Canadiens and full ownership of their arena. By his own
estimate, the Canadiens were roughly his 150th acquisition, the purchase coming
more than a half-century after he’d worked his first job in 1948 – picking
weeds in a Racine onion patch for his great-uncle Wally.
Within days, Gillett Jr. was strafed by some in the Montreal
media for his 1992 bankruptcy, from which he had fully recovered. Worse, he was
compared to an American entrepreneur who had destroyed the Montreal Alouettes
CFL football franchise in the early 1980s, then coarsely laughed off that
failure.
One of the loudest beefs about Gillett Jr.’s acquisition of
the Canadiens was that it was an American who now owned this provincial
treasure. It mattered not that no Quebec individual or corporation – not one –
chose to bid.
“My reaction was not to get angry (about the early
criticism) but ask that we be judged on our record (with the Canadiens), not
the past,” Gillett Jr. said on our flight to Toronto for the awards ceremony.
“I made a mistake years ago. I can only live with that so long.
“At some point, you have to look at what I’ve done more
recently. To the benefit of Quebec and particularly Montreal, they have turned
the page and allowed my family’s actions to speak louder than words.”
Gillett Jr. playfully seized his chance at the October 2008
Sports Media Canada luncheon, at which he was named the group’s executive of
the year.
“I don’t know how many of you remember the wonderful
articles that some of your compatriots wrote about me when I first got to
Montreal,” he told the media audience with a grin. “So I feel a real kinship to
your organization.”
The packed ballroom roared in laughter.
Fear and loathing had long given way to respect, even
affection for a man with a self-deprecating sense of humor who had proven not
to be Godzilla with a U.S. passport. It turns out that Gillett Jr. had not, in
fact, invaded Montreal to stomp the Canadiens flat or use the club’s long
thread of history as dental floss.
The team would have a record of 254-198-52 with 18 ties
during Gillett Jr.’s ownership, the 18 ties coming before the draw was
eliminated with the shootout following the lost season of 2004-05. Montreal
went to the Stanley Cup Playoffs five times in his 6 1/2 seasons, losing three
Eastern Conference Semifinal series and two Quarterfinal rounds.
As much as the Canadiens were a business to him and his
family, you always sensed that the Canadiens were also an emotional investment.
The team’s 100th season was a gold mine, jerseys from the
team’s past, myriad souvenirs and promotions and special nights filling his
coffers. But the owner always detoured well out of his way to make alumni feel
they still were a special part of the organization, and there was nothing he
enjoyed more than being one of the boys.
With the Canadiens on the brink of elimination to the
Carolina Hurricanes in Game 6 of their 2002 Eastern Conference Semifinal,
Montreal forward Doug Gilmour stepped into the second-period penalty box to
serve a minor and misconduct and slammed the door so violently that the glass
exploded in a blizzard. It took ice crews some time to clean it up, shoveling
the mess into wheelbarrows as Gilmour sat stone-faced in the sin bin.
Later, Gilmour saw the chance to prank the man who signed
his paycheck, taking about five pounds of broken glass to a team dinner and
filling Gillett Jr.’s suit jacket pockets with it when the latter wasn’t
looking. The owner nearly threw his shoulder out when he tried to swing the
jacket over an arm.
Gillett Jr. truly cherished the Canadiens community. The
engraved bricks in a plaza outside the arena made him a bundle, but he took
greater pride in seeing fans study the statues that honour four icons – Howie
Morenz, Maurice “Rocket” Richard, Jean Beliveau and Guy Lafleur.
He would return to Montreal in December 2014 upon Beliveau’s
death, the team’s greatest captain laying in state on the arena floor for
public visitation. Having grown close to Beliveau and taken much counsel from
the legend on team matters large and small, Gillett Jr. wept inconsolably in
private conversation after he’d done a lengthy interview for the media at
large.
The Canadiens would become just one holding in his sports
portfolio. During a six-month period in 2007, Gillett Jr. bought a 50-per-cent
share of the Liverpool soccer club with fellow American businessman Tom Hicks,
and a controlling interest in a multicar NASCAR operation.
I sat with Gillett Jr. in a Molson Centre conference room in
2003, two years into his ownership, for a wide-ranging conversation that he
often punctuated with jabs at himself.
“The best thing about owning the Canadiens is being a part
of the history and feeling that history – the relationship with the fans, the
passion of this (Quebec) province,” he said that day.
“The worst thing? Not being able to have any direct effect
on the result. In business, if you lose an order, you call on the customer and
get it fixed. In production, you repair the equipment. In this business, it's
an indirect kind of relationship and it's very difficult to get an immediate
response or reaction to any action that you take. That's difficult for someone
used to a very direct relationship with their businesses.”
Our talk that day would shift to his decade-long ownership
of the Globetrotters, whose 100-99 overtime loss to the New Jersey Reds in
March 1971 in Martin, Tennessee, ended the Globies’ 2,495-game winning streak.
“No matter where they were, or the time of day or night, we
had a rule: The team manager would call me after the game to tell me about the
crowd, injuries and the weather, because of travel,” Gillett Jr. began.
“When we were in the East or Midwest, the call would come by
11 p.m. or midnight. I was waiting for the call that night and it didn't come,
so I went to bed. At 2 a.m. the phone rang, and it was a grown man who was
sobbing: ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. ... we beat you tonight.’ It was Red
Klotz, the player-coach of our opponent, who had played for the old Baltimore
Bullets in the NBA. He was a specialist in the two-hand set shot.”
By now, Gillett Jr. seemed ready to dribble a basketball
around his conference room.
“I said: "Red, what happened!?’ ” he continued. “He
said, ‘George, you won't believe it. You guys had a one-point lead with a few
seconds left and I put myself in to make sure no one would do anything dumb and
you’d win. But somebody threw me the ball. I was almost at midcourt and I just
reacted. I let fly a two-hand set shot. Swish. We beat you by one.
“Red later said that ‘fans looked at us that night like we
had just killed Santa Claus,’ but I think the Globetrotters won their next
8,829 straight. I can still hear Red sobbing. I told him: ‘Red, that's
fabulous.’ And then we had a press conference – and we got much, much more
publicity out of the loss than any of our wins.”
In Gillett Jr.’s view, this wasn’t a loss. It was a
public-relations bonanza that had wonderfully fallen out of the sky, his wheels
of opportunity in high gear at 2 o’clock in the morning.
His career continued in the 1960s in marketing and
management consulting, initially with McKinsey & Co. A sports fanatic since
childhood, by 1966, he was business manager and partner of the Miami Dolphins.
In 1966, he purchased a 20% interest in the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise for $1
million. He sold this interest in 1968 for $3 million, and used some of the
proceeds to purchase the nearly defunct Harlem Globetrotters and later started
Globetrotters Communications, a nationally syndicated radio group. He reinvigorated
the Globetrotters by an intense marketing effort that included a popular
cartoon series.
In 1978, Gillett bought Packerland Packing Co. With the
successful venture of Packerland, Gillett then diversified into radio and
television with the start of Gillett Communications Company. At its peak,
Gillett Communications owned network affiliates, the majority of which were
CBS, in many of the country's major television markets.
In 1979, he launched Gillett Communications by buying three
small television stations. Three years later he bought WSM-TV in Nashville,
renamed WSMV. In 1984, Gillett acquired Appleton-based Post Corporation's eight
television stations, 22 newspapers and associated plants; the non-broadcast
assets were sold to Thomson Corporation and other buyers. In 1986, he bought
out the two A.S. Abell stations as part of a spin-off resulting from the
acquisition of A.S. Abell by Times Mirror Company.
n 1985, Gillett acquired Vail Associates' Vail and Beaver
Creek ski resorts. He would often ride chairlifts and greet guests, and
launched a massive installation of high-speed detachable chairlifts. Gillett
also supported major alpine ski events at a time when most ski areas in America
declined to host international races, starting with the 1989 World Alpine Ski
Championships, and through his support hosted the 1999 World Alpine Ski
Championships.
Gillett acquired majority control of the television assets
of Storer Communications in April 1987 from merchant banker Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts, and represented a valuation of nearly 15 times cash flow for the
group. KKR maintained 45-percent minority ownership. To meet regulatory
approval, Gillett's existing station group was spun off to Busse Broadcasting,
a company formed by Gillett employees. Gillett's purchase was financed by junk
bonds through KKR raised prior to Black Monday, which quickly placed Gillett in
a 10:1 debt-to-profit ratio. Rumors began circulating of Gillett selling off
one or several of his stations, while Gillett was reportedly interested in
buying the Seattle Seahawks. One of the Storer stations, WJW-TV, was frequently
the subject of sale rumors due to their ratings strength and stability.
In 2000, Gillett joined forces with Pat Bowlen and John
Elway in a failed attempt to buy the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, Colorado
Avalanche of the NHL, and Pepsi Center. On January 2, 2001, Gillett bought an
80% interest in the Montreal Canadiens and their home arena, Molson Centre, for
US$185 million. Prior to the purchase, Gillett had shown interest in the
Florida Panthers, New York Islanders, Ottawa Senators, and the Phoenix Coyotes.
Gillett's bid initially raised fears that he might move the NHL's oldest
franchise to the United States. However, after no other viable offers surfaced
from Canadian interests, Molson agreed to Gillett's offer. Molson, however,
maintained the right of first refusal should Gillett ever sell the team.
On March 27, 2008, Joey Saputo, chairman of USL First
Division team Montreal Impact, confirmed talks with Gillett and Major League
Soccer for a Montreal franchise. While a bid for a franchise was launched with
Saputo and Gillett co-heading the venture, as a result of finances, however,
the team would rescind the bid later that year on November 22.
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