THUNDER BAY – Keith McCullough says being an NHL owner was a wild and crazy ride, but it was time to move on.
The Thunder Bay-born investor and founder of Hedgeye Risk Management was one of a number of minority partners with the Arizona Coyotes who this week decided to sell their 49 per cent share of the team to majority owner Andrew Barroway.
According to a report in Forbes magazine, IceArizona walked away with $90 million in the deal, twice as much as the $45 million they invested in 2013.
McCullough, 42, reached by phone Tuesday on his way to Hartford, Conn., said Barroway decided he wanted to own the entire team himself and made a generous offer – though McCullough would not confirm the numbers published in the Forbes article.
“We’re really happy about the price and it just came at the right time,” said McCullough, whose Ice Arizona partners included Thunder Bay’s Anthony LeBlanc and fellow investor Daryl Jones.
“We really came into (the Coyotes) when it was a real mess. Time and space give you an opportunity to gain some profits I suppose. Like I said, the timing was right for us. We said yes, and we’re out.”
When McCullough and company initially bet on hockey in the desert, the team was coming off a tumultuous period in its history.
The former Winnipeg Jets were floundering in bankruptcy under owner Jerry Moyes and the league had taken over bill payments. IceArizona, then known as IceEdge, attempted to buy the team in 2010, but their bid fell apart.
By 2013 a new partnership group finalized the deal, an almost immediately began a protracted fight with Glendale, Ariz. city council, who two years ago voted to terminated the team’s 15-year, $225-million arena deal. They later inked a two-year deal that kept the team in the Phoenix area.
McCullough, the youngest owner in the league, tried to keep his distance.
“There was always a sideshow that was political,” he said. “For me personally … I really didn’t have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. I was just a minority owner who enjoyed buying an NHL hockey team coming out of bankruptcy.”
Why buy a money-losing team in a non-hockey market in the American southwest?
It was the challenge, said McCullough, adding later he had to pinch himself when he found himself in the owners’ box, surrounded by family and friends.
“We were the first ones to look at it. We were the first ones to see some value there, and if you’re the buyer at a bankruptcy price, it’s a lot different than being in a perpetual argument of what the ultimate price is,” he said.
Now that he’s out, McCullough said he’s not sure if hockey can survive in the American southwest.
“I don’t know. That’s the answer,” he said. “I don’t know because I don’t know if they’re going to get a new arena. If they do not, it will probably remain as it has for a long time.”
McCullough said he’s already moving on to his next ventures, launching three companies, including the venture capital firm Seven7 with former NHLer Martin St. Louis. He added he hasn't ruled out a return to NHL ownership in the future and said he's still interested in bringing an American Hockey League team to Thunder Bay.
