Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080256
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: RANDY KING STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ECHL club owners, many of whom a day before had questioned Roanoke's ability to support a franchise, voted 14-1 in favor of the expansion bid submitted by Hockey-Roanoke Inc., a seven-member group of businessmen led by Botetourt County businessman John Gagnon.
"We're all very excited about all this," said Gagnon, speaking via telephone from the league meetings in Freeport, Bahamas.
"It has been such a long haul to get to this point. After the vote was over, [the owners] said, `This is the last chance for Roanoke.' "
Just a day earlier, Gagnon and partner Pierre Paiement had begun to think their chances of dropping a puck in the Roanoke Civic Center this winter had melted in the hot Bahamas sun. In a straw vote among the 15 club owners held Thursday morning, Gagnon and Paiement came up two votes short of the two-thirds majority (10 votes) necessary to approve an incoming franchise.
"When we got out of the meeting Thursday at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Pierre and I were worried, real worried. We were pacing around, wondering what to do next," Gagnon said.
"Basically what was happening," noted Gagnon, "was that a lot of people had very bad feelings about Roanoke being a `no-draw' city. They said, `Why should this time be any different? Other owners had tried in Roanoke and they couldn't do it. So why should it work for you?' "
While Gagnon and Paiement were trying to conjure a way to sway the two votes they needed, ECHL founding father and longtime Roanoke hockey baron Henry Brabham was beginning to make some moves away from the meeting site. When a Thursday afternoon golf outing among the owners at a Freeport country club was rained out, Brabham took the idle time to try and twist some arms for his Roanoke brethren.
"Henry has a lot of influence in this league," Gagnon said. "He talked to the owners, made a big speech about Roanoke.
"Let me tell you, Henry Brabham did it for us. If Henry hadn't been here, we wouldn't have this franchise."
Gagnon also credited an assist to North Carolinian Bill Coffey, the former Greensboro (N.C.) Monarchs owner who helped Brabham launch the league in 1988.
In an attempt to make sure all bases were covered, Gagnon and Paiement "politicked" from 9 p.m. Thursday to 3 a.m. Friday.
"We took each owner aside one by one, talked to them and related to them," Gagnon said. "Obviously, in a more comfortable environment like that it made it easier for us to get allies. And once we got an ally, he would go and convince somebody else.
"Our convincing argument was that Roanoke had never had a franchise. Vinton had had one and it wasn't really associated with Roanoke. Plus, the marketing of hockey had been very poor.
"We also told how 4,500 people used to come to the civic center 20 years ago when hockey wasn't even known in the South. People went to the games then, so why wouldn't it work now?"
When he crawled in bed at 3:30 a.m. Friday, Gagnon said he felt like "everything was locked in."
He was right. The vote was completed at 9:45 a.m. Friday. The only dissenting vote was cast by Birmingham (Ala.) Bulls owner Ron Fuller.
"Man, I'm glad it's over," Gagnon said, sighing. "Before I came down here, I thought this was going to be easy and it was not. Obviously, the owners I had spoken to before coming down here were all positive owners, ones who were going to vote for us anyway. But when I got down here it was all different."
Gagnon has called a news conference for 11 a.m. Monday at the civic center.
The ECHL owners also approved an expansion franchise for Huntington, W.Va., for next season. The addition of Roanoke and Huntington gives the league 19 teams for the 1992-93 season, which begins Oct. 20.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.