Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 17, 1993 TAG: 9310170099
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RANDY KING STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ If the truth be known, the roots of Roanoke's new professional hockey franchise can be traced back three years to perhaps the unlikeliest of venues.
In an aisle at a Kroger store.
That's where John Gagnon first met Pierre Paiement in an impromptu meeting that bucked all odds.
"There's maybe about 10 French-Canadians in Roanoke that I know of," Gagnon said. "It's really incredible that two could be in the same place at the same time.
"Anyway, my wife [Nicole] was in one aisle and I was in another, looking for something or another. In the meantime, Pierre was shopping on the same aisle my wife was on. Then he heard her speaking French to my son.
"Finally, he asked her, `Where are you from?' She said, `We're from Montreal and we live in Roanoke.' "
Seconds later, Gagnon returned. He wondered what was going on.
"At first, I thought Pierre was trying to make the move on my wife - no, no, just joking," Gagnon said, grinning. "Then Pierre and I introduced ourselves. We hit it off right away. He invited me to his restaurant afterwards, and we talked all night long almost. Pierre, you know, always has 1,000 stories about hockey and so forth. We became very good friends that night."
Three years later, they are the inseparable founding partners of Roanoke's new East Coast Hockey League expansion franchise - the Roanoke Express.
Gagnon, 40, who moved from Montreal to Daleville five years ago to run his Covington-based freight business, is the club's majority owner. Paiement, 43, who had been in the restaurant business since playing minor-league hockey in Roanoke in the early 1970s, is the club's general manager and one of five minority owners.
"For some reason or another," Paiement said, "I think John and I always had the feeling all along that one day we'd do something big together. Well, here it is."
\ What if . . .
When John Gagnon first met Pierre Paiement, he had no idea pro hockey even existed in Roanoke.
Paiement, after constantly feeding Gagnon all the stories about his Roanoke playing days, soon started hauling his new sidekick to ECHL games at the Vinton LancerLot.
"I had been here a year and didn't even know it," Gagnon said. "That's how well hockey was being promoted here.
"But I was very impressed with the caliber of play. I was kind of looking for Junior A, Junior B or guys with no future and too old for the National Hockey League. I had never heard of the East Coast league. I saw them play, and I said to Pierre, `Jeez, this is good hockey. I'm impressed.' "
Gagnon's curiosity level peaked last November at a Roanoke Valley Rampage game in Vinton. That's when a red light flashed in the mind of Gagnon the businessman, not the hockey fan.
"Pierre and I were in the Budweiser suite and there must have been close to 3,000 people there that night," Gagnon said. "I remember saying to Pierre, `If they can draw 3,000 people to the LancerLot when it's not promoted, what could you do if you put a team in the Roanoke Civic Center and promote hockey in Roanoke as good family entertainment?'
"I couldn't imagine why [Rampage owner Larry Revo] wasn't playing in the civic center. I said to Pierre, `It's too bad. We should be looking at a team or maybe something like that.'
"Maybe I'd had too much [beer], I don't know."
\ If it's a risk, he'll take it
When John Gagnon wants something, he's used to getting it. If it means risk is involved, so be it.
Like he says, you don't do what he did without rolling the dice every now and then. In a span of 12 years, Gagnon has built a freight company that started with himself, one partner and five trucks into a mini-trucking empire that includes 150 trucks, 400 vans, 210 employees and revenues of $26 million [for 1992].
"It's a lot of gambling," Gagnon said. "When I started my own company, I had $3,000 in the bank . . . enough to survive for one month.
"But things went well and just kept snowballing, getting bigger and bigger. You always look for that growth and what you'd like to be. We said we'd like to one day go to 25 trucks. Then we went to 100, 150 - and today we still think the same way.
"A lot of it is just luck. You have to work hard.
"Then there's this thing called opportunity. When a door opens, you've got a choice. One, don't go through it because you don't know what's on the other side. Or two, you can just pass it. There's not that many doors that open in front of you. My philosophy about business is you can't let too many open doors go by. If you do, you'll regret it later."
\ Making his move
When the door to hockey began to swing open last winter, John Gagnon didn't waste any time shoving his foot in the entrance.
"I'm a very impulsive person," he said. "I jump into things really fast. If I think it's a good idea, I go with it pretty quickly."
When reading in the newspaper that Rampage owner Larry Revo was talking about moving Roanoke's ECHL entry to Syracuse, N.Y., Gagnon saw a wide-open net. It was opportunity knocking.
"I knew Revo had said in September that he needed 2,400 [average home-game attendance] to stay here," Gagnon said. "I thought the guy was just blackmailing the population.
"But when I read he might go to Syracuse, I started talking seriously with Pierre about it."
At first, Paiement said he thought it was just "another one of John's crazy ideas."
"John is always coming up with these things," Paiement said. "One day, he says to me, `I'm in the trucking business and you're in the food business, so why don't we do something about all the bad food you get at truckstops.' His big idea was to build a restaurant at every truckstop."
Paiement soon discovered his buddy was serious about the hockey idea. With Revo looking elsewhere, Gagnon sent a letter of inquiry in early January to the ECHL office in Charlotte, N.C.
"I wrote the league saying that if Larry Revo moves out of Roanoke that I would be interested in having a franchise in Roanoke maybe, depending on the price," Gagnon said. "I hadn't done any background work at this point. I just wanted to throw out a feeler and see what kind of response I'd get.
"Two weeks later, Bud Gingher [ECHL president and Dayton Bombers owner] called me and says, `If Larry Revo leaves, I would be interested in proposing to the league to get Roanoke back on the circuit.' "
When Revo's proposed deal with Syracuse fell through, Gagnon was forced into an agonizing holding pattern as Revo then tried to work an end-run to Huntsville, Ala.
"Revo was supposed to have let the league know by March 1 what he was going to do," Gagnon said. "But he got hung up on the Huntsville thing, and finally, on March 10, I said I need to get moving here. I hadn't negotiated with the civic center yet, and I knew we were losing possible playing dates as every day passed.
"So I called Revo and said, `Look, I'm interested in having a franchise here. He said, `Good luck.' That was interesting.
"I asked him if he was going to move or not. I offered to lease the team from him if the Huntsville deal fell through. He said he would be interested in that."
Finally, on April 8, Revo got the OK to move the Rampage to Huntsville. That left Gagnon three weeks to make his move. The ECHL's deadline for bids for 1993-94 expansion franchises was May 1.
\ Number crunching
In front of them, Gagnon and Paiement had a ton of homework left that was due yesterday.
The foremost hurdle was working a deal with the Roanoke Civic Center, which hadn't housed the local minor-league hockey team on a regular basis since 1976 and didn't appear particularly excited about doing it again.
"It was intense negotiations," Gagnon said. "It was probably the hardest thing of all. We met with Bob Chapman [civic center manager] and Mac McCadden [Roanoke's sports-pushing city councilman] about every day."
Finally, on April 16, Hockey-Roanoke Inc. reached an agreement in principle on a two-year lease. It was approved five days later by the Roanoke Civic Center Commission.
All the while, Gagnon had his personal full-time CPA putting a pencil to the numbers.
"We looked at a lot of numbers in a hurry," Gagnon said. "Two other clubs sent us financial statements from the previous year, and we took a close look at those. I had to look at some real figures. Since I had never owned a hockey team before, it was pretty hard for me to put all the figures together.
"I gave my CPA all the numbers. I said, `Here's the figures, here's the projections and so forth . . . put this all together and see how it comes out if we have so many people per game . . . 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 in increments of 500."
Gagnon and his CPA came up with a budget of $800,000 for the first season, not including the league's $500,000 expansion franchise fee.
Mini-trucking empire or no mini-trucking empire, that was a little more than Gagnon chose to bite off by himself. Time, more so than the money, prevented Gagnon from being a one-man power play.
"Obviously, Pierre was in with me," Gagnon said. "I wanted 50 percent of it, and I figured maybe I could get five more partners at 10 percent.
"I never would have gotten in by myself at 100 percent. I could not handle the work. And I would have never gotten in without Pierre. I had to have him to rely on and trust. I told him if he wanted this job, he would have to get out of the restaurant because we'd need 100, 150 percent of his time to put this thing together."
The search for minority partners came down to the wire, Gagnon said.
"Originally, I had had six people who had told me they were interested in investing, but when I went back to them, all six said no without even seeing the figures," Gagnon said. "They said, `John, I'll get back with you on it.' Sure."
Blacksburg lawyer Joe Steffen, an avid hockey fan, did come on board. Mike Stevens, a Galax furniture executive and friend of Steffen's, joined next. The final three investors were Roanoke restauranteur Richard Macher, Harrisonburg CPA Richard Yancey and Covington CPA Cassandra Bell and her husband, Richard.
\ A hard sell
With investors secured and a plan of attack worked out, Gagnon and Paiement left for Freeport, Bahamas, on May 3 to make their sales pitch to the ECHL's owners.
The trip didn't turn out to be the vacation Gagnon and Paiement had expected.
"Going down there, I thought all they wanted was a check from us and we'd be out of there," Gagnon said. "I was wrong. We never saw the beach for four days."
Gagnon made his presentation to the board on May 5.
"Beforehand, I knew my presentation would be the key to whether we got the franchise or not," Gagnon said. "Well, I was kind of nervous, and I don't think I really impressed anybody."
After making his presentation, Gagnon ran into Henry Brabham, the Vinton businessman who single-handedly kept hockey alive in Roanoke through the 1980s and founded the ECHL in 1988.
"I told Henry it looks like we're not going to get it," Gagnon said. "He says, `No, you're not. You've got at least 10 people against you because they think Roanoke is a no-draw city. Everybody's against you.' "
Gagnon sat down with Brabham and asked him what he should do. Gagnon said he and Brabham, though they had never met before, hit it off from the start.
"When we got up, Henry said, `Well, . . . they [the owners] owe me,' because he really is the father of this league.
"Henry said, `I'm going to talk to them and they're going to vote the way I want them to vote.' "
Using his clout, Brabham delayed the vote on the Roanoke franchise bid until the next day.
Gagnon said, "Henry told us, `Boys, you'd lost today. So you've got a lot of work to do tonight, and I've got a lot of work to do tonight to convince everybody.' "
Gagnon and Paiement spent the next 10 to 12 hours cruising the hotel's various lounges and bars, talking to every ECHL club owner in the building.
"If Pierre would have had that many moves on the ice as a player, he'd made the NHL," Gagnon still likes to quip.
"We entertained every owner in there," Paiement said. "We go to every bar. We talk to everybody. We sit with everybody. We're telling 'em all about Roanoke. We're selling Roanoke because people did not believe in Roanoke because of its past."
At 5 a.m. on May 7, Gagnon finally rolled back into his hotel room, where he was greeted by his unamused wife.
"When I came in at that hour, my wife was really upset," he said. "She thought I was in a lot of trouble or something. She finally calmed down, though."
At 8 a.m., Gagnon was awakened by a phone call. Vern Danielson, a member of the civic center commission, was on the line.
"Vern had read in the paper that it didn't look good for us getting a franchise," Gagnon said. "He offered for the mayor and him to fly down and try and help out. But by then it was too late. The vote was at 9 o'clock that morning."
At 9:05, Gagnon and Paiement, both still hurting from the night of hustle, ambled toward the conference room where the vote was taking place.
As they got to the conference-room door, Brabham was on the way out.
"Guys, you've got a franchise," Brabham said. "They voted 14-1 in your favor."
Gagnon said he and Paiement then bear-hugged each other.
"We told each other we got it," Gagnon said. "We were extremely excited. Then, we looked at each other and said, `Now the real work begins."
\ One step at a time
Nickname. Head coach. NHL affiliation. Players. Marketing. Season-ticket sales. All that plus much more had to be done.
"It's not easy being an expansion club," Gagnon said. "There's just so many details to cover. You just can't realize how much work this whole thing has been."
On June 1, after a name-the-team contest through the newspaper and radio stations, Hockey-Roanoke Inc. became the Roanoke Express.
Next, the Express needed a conductor. After a six-week search, Gagnon and Paiement settled on New Yorker Frank Anzalone, who was appointed the club's head coach on June 14.
On August 9, the franchise announced it had secured an affiliation with the NHL's San Jose Sharks.
"One of the hardest things was that we had made a lot of promises early," Gagnon said. "We made promises to have a good coach, to have an NHL affiliation, to have a good team."
Mostly because of the Express' aggressive promotion work, hockey is being talked about on the streets of Roanoke like never before.
"I think we did our work," Gagnon said. "I don't think we could have done any more. We've done everything possible to promote and put the best team on the ice possible. We want to produce entertainment. We want to put some fun back in the civic center."
As of Thursday, the Express had sold 1,214 season tickets, more than four times the amount sold by last season's Rampage.
Gagnon estimated the club needs to average a minimum of 3,000 per home game in order to break even financially.
"The only real negative thing is all the Tuesday dates at the civic center," Gagnon said. "But we got what the Roanoke Civic Center date book had open.
"The civic center did all it could do. Now, the civic center basically has the same attitude as everybody else in Roanoke - let's wait and see what happens."
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