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Danny Wirtz on the Blackhawks' rebuild: "I continue to be very encouraged and supportive of the plan that's in place." Chase Agnello-Dean / NHLI via Getty Images
CHICAGO — Considering it’s the Chicago Blackhawks’ centennial year, Blackhawks chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz has been perusing eBay lately for items to add to his family’s collection.
“I realized I’m a little thin in a few areas, so I’ve been acquiring old books, a lot of old enamel pins,” Wirtz said. “I’m fascinated by the Blackhawk Standbys, which was like our fan club. I have an amazing collection of like Starter and sort of vinyl jackets, letterman jackets. I have one that’s probably this big with my name embroidered on it from the ’70s. I have like a lot of that stuff, you know, old jerseys, old Gunzo’s memorabilia, that’s very much things I’ve held onto and I can never get rid of, and I’ve passed on to nephews and my daughters and they’ve all worn these things. Yeah, my family’s pretty good about rocking lots of vintage, if you see them across the board.”
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Wirtz made his rounds this week, talking with media outlets about the past, present and future of the Blackhawks. Here’s our interview with him.
(Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
First off, can you say why you settled the John Doe lawsuit after fighting it for so long?
No, I can acknowledge we settled it, and that’s really all I can comment on it.
During the centennial ceremony on Saturday, Pat Foley was obviously pretty emotional about Troy Murray and his current fight. (Murray was diagnosed with cancer and hasn’t been broadcasting games lately.) It’s no secret how much he means to the fans. What does Troy mean to you and this organization throughout his playing career and as a broadcaster?
We’ve been actually talking a lot about like, what does it mean to be a Blackhawk? And sometimes you can put it into words. And sometimes you just know it when you see it and feel it. And Troy is that. If I can try to put it into words, he was a great two-way player, so the kind of player that cares about all aspects of a game. He was a complete player.
But I think beyond and transcending all he did on the ice, he is one of the most quality people that you’ll ever come in contact with. And you don’t have to just ask teammates, you can ask every person who works for the Blackhawks, I would presume media, anyone who works at the United Center. He’s just one of those people with the biggest heart, always up for a laugh, always up for a joke. Because of that, people like that tend to touch so many people. I think that’s why this moment’s so heavy as he goes through his battle because I think he’s beloved by so many people, not just the people you would expect immediately around him, but all the folks through the organization, through the whole hockey world here in Chicago and beyond that have the privilege of knowing and being friends with him. It was great to hear how Pat kind of used that moment to send some fan reaction his way and obviously well deserved.
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With that ceremony and the kickoff of the centennial year, what impact do you feel like your family’s had on the organization’s history?
I think the word that I hold onto that is sort of a consistent through the generations is stewardship. Stewardship means you sort of take care of things while you have the opportunity. I think that goes into a lot of different areas. Of course, taking care of the organization and making sure the business is healthy, the team is healthy, players, the relationships with all the folks that we need to have relationships with, from partners to media to alumni. Those are the kind of things, when you love and care for something, you’re responsible for it and therefore you steward it. So I think that’s been a consistent.
And, of course, each generation has had their own mark in terms of their specific contributions or decisions that changed the trajectory of the team or in many cases, the league. My grandfather was a huge piece of the board of governors and the expansion and sort of the growth of the game. That was one of his unique contributions. Of course, my dad’s legacy. Everybody sort of made their mark, but also everybody takes that same level of responsibility and stewardship to continue to keep this.
What do you hope your mark is over the next 20 to 25 years or whatever it is?
It’s a great question. First and foremost, we’d love to have a fourth generation on the Stanley Cup. That was a conversation my dad and I had up until his passing as a goal of his. It always starts there, for sure, is that sort of pinnacle of success, clearly. But I think that’s work in progress.
I’d love to see how this sport can grow, how our fan base can grow, how we can continue to build on the originality that we’re known for and invent, reinvent parts of the game or parts of how we run the business, how we grow the sport in the community. Those are all things that are really important to me. We’ll just keep doing all the work we need to do and we’ll let somebody else deal with assigning legacy to that down the road.
You’ve seen what it takes to win and certainly seen the three Cups, but also the most challenging part, especially in the salary cap era, is sustaining that. You’ve stood behind Kyle Davidson’s plan from the start and have continually said that. What assures you from what you’ve seen that this is headed in the right direction? The second part of that question is, do you envision future sustainability?
I continue to be very encouraged and supportive of the plan that’s in place. I can only deal with one step at a time. I can’t solve three steps ahead now. But every step from when we decided we needed to acquire more talent in our pipeline to now not only acquiring that talent, but now starting to develop that talent, and now we’re at a stage where that talent is still developing, but also starting to contribute. So, each step of the way, Kyle has been very responsible with that specific phase and remit, and I’ve been encouraged along the way.
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I think one of the things that gives me a lot of confidence, you mentioned sustainability, is the fact that there is so much being built from within. So when I talk about this pipeline, from the players drafted as recent as the last draft all the way to the players that are now making their way onto the NHL roster, there seems to be a lot of really exciting prospects in our system. That is always a great way to sustain success in the future, because you’re going to have this internal talent to work from and potentially even a surplus at some point with all the kind of indicators that we see.
The big thing I hear from the fans often is when the rebuild will turn the corner. There’s Kyle’s rebuild, and there’s the sort of rebuild that happened before that. Where’s your patience level? Do you have an expectation for when this turns the corner and you can start competing for the playoffs again?
I’m as anxious as anyone. I would love to be able to press a button and have it happen right now. But that’s going to be predicated on when these players develop and make that switch. The good news is it doesn’t seem like it’s very far away. But it is going to be on the timeline of our players. We’re not going to rush players. We’re not going to push things faster than they need to be. We’re not going to look for shortcuts. So I remain patient because I believe in how we’re doing this, and I think ultimately that should hopefully lead to a sooner-than-later level of success because we’re doing it the right way.
How much in the weeds are you in following the pipeline and what’s coming? Are you paying attention to Anton Frondell in Sweden or Roman Kantserov in Russia?
I think it’s one of the great things now. I was talking about this yesterday, rewind to when we were youngsters, you didn’t really know about (prospects). You didn’t see a Blackhawk until they literally showed up on the ice. The fact that we can get video in real time of Frondell doing the Michigan goal in Sweden, or Kantserov just scored a goal in the KHL and it’s coming through our Twitter feed, I think is a great way for fans to see sort of that pipeline that’s happening overseas in particular or at college. Every Saturday night, it’s fun to see the tallies of what our prospects are doing in college or juniors or overseas, so that’s very exciting. I love that part of the game, especially for players that we truly believe in and drafted and then to see them wherever they’re at in the world continuing to grow and develop, and that just makes us that much more excited about what’s coming down the road.
The next phase of the rebuild is, partly, paying some of these young players. We’ve seen it with Frank Nazar, Alex Vlasic, Spencer Knight and eventually Connor Bedard and others. The league is also entering a different financial world where the salary cap is expected to increase substantially. In the past, most successful NHL teams have operated near the cap ceiling. From your perspective as the team chairman, how do you look at the increasing cap and how that could affect the Blackhawks, if at all?
One of the best things about a cap is that it gave us some level of visibility and certainty to plan as opposed to having it be an open-ended kind of thing. So, we know what the max looks like. Now it’s our job on the business side to make sure we can keep up with the rising player costs by all means. It’s all an indication of a healthy league, which is great. So, we know what we have to do on the business side to keep pace.
I feel that Kyle has also surrounded himself and others within hockey ops to really think strategically about the cap and how and when all of the factors and decisions we make around roster composition and resulting salary plays into our team’s success. The good news is we’re in a place with a lot of flexibility today, and using really smart projection tools, we can really start to craft what it’s going to take to make this all work financially and within the cap. But we always have been willing to invest behind a team we believe is going to win Stanley Cups, and I don’t think that’s going to change.
How challenging is it from a business side to keep up with a growing cap?
It’s challenging. Business is challenging all over the place these days. I can speak on behalf of all of our businesses. It’s a competitive world. You’re fighting for attention and entertainment dollars, all those kinds of things. The good news is our business is healthy right now. Despite the team performance, we have a really healthy business from sponsorship to tickets and all the things that come from that, so I feel really good there. But it just continues to put more pressure on (president of business operations) Jaime (Faulkner) and the team to sort of find new ways to generate revenue, to continue to keep pace so that we can continue to pay our players and stay competitive.
The NHL can be gossipy, and there are rumors around contracts. Are either or both Jaime Faulkner or Kyle Davidson near needing to be extended, and do you foresee extending them?
I’m very pleased with both of them, and we’ll be having conversations about that, for sure.
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How much of the RSN (regional sports network) business’ changes has affected your business and potentially the profit level you need to make up for it?
Absolutely. Make no mistake, and this is not unique to Chicago, (or) the Blackhawks: The world of local regional sports network media rights has changed drastically. And so, it changes your financial picture considerably. I can’t speak on behalf of other leagues, but for us in particular at the NHL, the local media rights was a more important piece of our profit picture. So obviously, the hit there was fairly significant. So that’s been something we’ve had to battle through like anything else while we continue to see the media world kind of get sorted out from a business model standpoint.
What gives me some hope is the fact that I do believe that our product has a tremendous amount of value; live sports has a tremendous amount of value. It’s just right now finding out how that can be truly monetized for the brand owners as we kind of explore different models, both at the local and at the national level.
I know there was a hope that a Comcast deal would have been done earlier for CHSN. Were there any lessons through the process? You obviously had to give up the over-the-air option locally.
I think if there was a lesson learned, I actually thought that our approach with over-the-air was meant to sort of open up opportunity for people to access our games — I think the execution of that was harder than I would have anticipated. And probably from a Comcast standpoint, meeting our fans where they’re at, which was very much in that cable world, specifically Comcast being the largest provider to Blackhawk fans. Hindsight’s 20/20, and you learn, but I feel really good that we’re at a better spot today than we were a year ago.
Do you have a sense of how much impact Comcast is already having on that?
Clearly, our ratings are up exponentially versus last year, so more people are able to and are tuning in. Now we have greater availability. We’re seeing really good subscription rates as it relates to our direct consumer app. Of course, I think there’s excitement around the season with the centennial. I think there’s excitement around our team. We are trying to do everything we can to make sure that it’s very clear as to how, when, and where you can watch our games, which I think, after all of the other issues, that’s just sort of the state of play for sports right now and everybody can relate to: “I have no idea which channel these games are on, both nationally, locally, regionally.” So, we’re doing everything we can to make sure fans can at least know, “Is this game on locally tonight on CHSN? Is this a national game?”
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Scott Powers is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Chicago Blackhawks. Previously, he covered the Blackhawks and the White Sox for ESPN Chicago. He has also written for the Daily Herald and the Chicago Sun-Times and has been a sportswriter in the Chicagoland area for the past 15 years. Follow Scott on Twitter @byscottpowers
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