The passing of Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch at age 87 Friday rippled throughout not only his beloved hometown of Detroit, but through the NHL and the sports world in general. He was the son of a Macedonian immigrant; an American soldier; a minor-league baseball player and a stunningly successful businessman and philanthropist who would go on to become a billionaire and owner of Major League Baseball’s Detroit Tigers, but the high-water mark of Ilitch’s legacy – other than his seven children and the 61 years he spent married to Marian Ilitch – was his transformation of the Wings from a wobbling and faded Original Six franchise to an organization that was the class of the league, if not professional sports altogether.
Indeed, there are people in the industry who believe that, aside from the number of Stanley Cup wins an organization can boast of, the way you judge any sports franchise is by the number of people hired away from it by other owners to run their team. In that regard, Ilitch's organization had few, if any equals. You look around the league today and you see Steve Yzerman running things in Tampa Bay, Brendan Shanahan and Mike Babcock turning around the Maple Leafs’ ship in Toronto, Jim Nill serving as steward of the Dallas Stars, Todd McClellan and Bill Peters coaching their teams to better days in Edmonton and Carolina, and the impact Bryan Murray has had in Anaheim, Florida and Ottawa, and it all connects back to one operation: Ilitch’s Wings.
This has not been a product of accident or good fortune. It didn’t happen immediately when he purchased the franchise in 1982 for $8 million, but, slowly and surely, the Wings transformed into a fearsome powerhouse under Ilitch’s watch. In the days before the NHL’s salary cap, he was unafraid to spend money to make money, routinely rewarding his players with more cash than any other owner in the league. In 2003-04, the Wings’ payroll was nearly $78 million – some $5 million more than the NHL’s present-day hard cap ceiling, and the highest payroll of any of the 30 teams at the time.
But it wasn’t just players who benefitted from his largesse: Ilitch recognized a productive management system when he saw one, and rather than allow other owners to swoop in and hire away key cogs such as longtime-assistant GM Nill, he increased Nill’s salary and worked with GM Ken Holland to be flexible with his duties so that Nill contributed in a more meaningful manner. It was a continuation of Ilitch’s willingness to do things in his own way – prior to Holland taking the GM reins, Devellano moved around in various positions over the years, and shared GM responsibilities with coaching legend Scotty Bowman from 1994-97 – and he wasn’t an imposing figure when it came to making on-ice decisions. He knew the right people to hire, and he knew enough to leave them to their own devices. The NHL’s history is littered with the reputations of men who had just as much business acumen as Ilitch, but who never could match his instincts for what made a champion.
Small wonder, then, that the Red Wings – a team that had missed the playoffs five straight seasons when Ilitch took over and one that had trouble filling Joe Louis Arena many nights – went on to make a post-season appearance in 25 straight seasons (the third-longest streak in league history) and win four Cups in 11 years. Its players were happy. Its coaches were happy. And, most, importantly, its fans were happy. They got to root for a franchise that would do anything in its power to win: match a massive offer sheet to star Sergei Fedorov; take a chance on star goalie Dominik Hasek coming out of retirement, despite the problems it caused with de facto No. 1 Curtis Joseph; pluck Larry Murphy out of turbulent Toronto and make him a key component in their back-to-back Cup wins. It didn’t always work out, but the burning fire that drove the team started at the top with Ilitch, and permeated the rest of the organization.
Ilitch’s initial success as an entrepreneur came with his Little Caesar’s pizza chain, but despite the astonishing growth of that company, he couldn’t endear himself to his city with it the way he did with the Wings. At a time when economic issues were devastating Detroit in ways too numerous to mention here, his hockey team’s triumphs were and remain a source of immense pride and inspiration for his community. Nobody in the modern 30-team era of the league was able to continually assemble dominant teams the way he and his employees did, and Michigan’s biggest city got to enjoy four championship parades because of it.
This is why so many people are mourning Ilitch’s death. Where fans of other NHL teams and franchises in other leagues had no choice but to grumble and grimace over the folly, foibles and failures of their owners, Red Wings fans were extraordinarily blessed with an owner whose bottom line wasn’t a financial windfall, but winning.
With due respect to his pizza, that’s what Wings fans, the people of Detroit, and the game of hockey will remember him for.