Vancouver Canucks Chase a Stanley Cup
The Vancouver Canucks have become one of the most consistently profitable franchises in the NHL. But how much longer can it last without a Stanley Cup?
For a building that has entertained sellout crowds more than eight years running, Rogers Arena can be a pretty quiet place. It’s an off day and only a few staffers wave hello as Victor de Bonis, the Vancouver Canucks’ chief operating officer, strides along the corridor near the Canucks locker room, pausing to say hi to one of the organization’s carpenters. “Might have a job for you later,” he calls out behind him, adding, “You always need a good carpenter.”
Long-suffering Canucks fans hope the franchise has the right builders in place, but 40 years of disappointment have created a natural wariness. De Bonis can’t answer for all four decades, but he was here by the time they built this joint and named it after a car company. In fact, young de Bonis was parking cars at the Pacific Coliseum back when the ’80s Canucks were there putting together 11 straight losing seasons dressed in multi-coloured pajamas. After a detour through accounting firm KPMG, de Bonis joined the Canucks operation in 1994, and has since seen various regimes come and go – “three ownership groups, six or seven presidents, just as many GMs and maybe more coaches,” he guesses. At the heart of an NHL franchise in a hockey-crazed town, de Bonis performs a job only tangentially related to the on-ice action. He must attend to the sort of hockey business that draws no roars from the crowd, managing the day-to-day complexities presented by a major sports organization. While the GM sets the team vision, the COO is tasked with making the big machine go. Unlike GM Mike Gillis, whose day-to-day primary focus is on hockey operations, de Bonis says, “mine is on business operations.”
Financially speaking, de Bonis and company are doing something right. If the Canucks were publicly traded they would be a strong buy. The Canucks currently rank eighth on Forbes magazine’s annual list of most valuable NHL teams, with an estimated valuation of US$262 million – two slots and $68 million higher than on the same list in 2006. That number is also $55 million higher than the amount Francesco Aquilini reportedly paid for the team in 2005. According to Forbes, “The Canucks have become one of the most consistently profitable teams in the NHL, earning $70 million in operating profits over the past four years (only the Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Rangers and Red Wings did better).”
Look around a packed and buzzing Rogers Arena – if you somehow manage to get a ticket – and it’s easy to forget that it was not always so. In 1997 designated saviour Mark Messier was leading his team into the wilderness, Trevor Linden was soon to be headed for the New York Islanders, and GM Mike Keenan was busy alienating players and fans alike. Attendance of 9,000 in the 21,000-seat arena was not uncommon. What powered the Vancouver franchise on the end-to-end rush that has made this one of the most admired teams in the NHL?
Not all of the team’s current success is of its own making. A soaring loonie has been a boon for a team that pays salaries in U.S. dollars while collecting revenue in Canadian. And with their current popularity, the Canucks are tapping a fan base that was always there, waiting for a winner, in what is essentially a one-and-a-half-sport town. The arena, owned by Aquilini and his brothers, is a profit machine that reportedly generates $25 million a year in private boxes and corporate suites alone. As the team enters its fifth decade of operations, the case can be made that it is now at a historic peak, lacking only a Stanley Cup to be recognized as one of the elite NHL operations. But if current management deserves kudos, it has built on foundations laid by predecessors now long gone.
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