This is a very unfortunate situation in many ways. In my personal opinion, Niagara has one of the best fan bases in the league. Incredible support for the team. They play out of a great junior arena.
I think this highlights how difficult it is to find solid owners in the OHL now. With franchise prices escalated to around $20mil (rumoured), it really is a lot of money tied up in an investment where teams likely break even or make a small amount annually. This leads to owners only using the franchise as a toy or to satisfy their ego and build artificial status.
It doesn’t look like buying an OHL franchise is a sound business decision so this is what happens in some situations.
For some reason franchise values have gotten out of control in a league that doesn’t make much money. How a team like Ottawa can be purchased in 1999 for a record $5mil escalate to $20mil in 2022 is absurd when you consider all the labour disputes and turmoil amateur hockey is experiencing right now.
I’d like to think finding another owner would be relatively easy if this situation were to get to that level but it doesn’t look like the grass would be greener for a certainty.
I really hope this franchise stabilizes over the next two seasons. They will have a new GM and Kuwabara should add stability behind the bench. With any luck, this may turn out to be a positive for the franchise going into the future if there are issues with an owner. He will have less responsibility for there next couple of years. I think everyone hopes this shakeup will result in positives starting next season.
The IceDogs were highly profitable as recently as 2016, when forensic accountant Ronald Smith examined the books at the behest of the Ontario Superior Court. Keep in mind that the Burkes also paid themselves more than handsome executive salaries, employed a slew of well-paid family members beyond just their sons, spent $170K per year to lease BMWs for the family, and even issued substantial corporate dividends to themselves.
This isn’t to suggest that EVERY major junior hockey franchise is so profitable, but the IceDogs absolutely are.
The previous owners were not “forced” to sell the team — they chose to do so instead of waiting out the league sanctions against their sons (one the GM, the other the head coach), both of whom received indefinite/2-year minimum suspensions.
When the previous owners eventually decided to sell,
they sought the highest bidder.
The Darren DeDobbelaer group offered a reported $20 million. That was the highest bid. Yes, the league had to approve the sale, but saying “No” would have been very difficult. Remember, the league’s governors are the owners of the teams, and they understand that their own clubs increase in value when other franchises sell for big bucks. We’d all like to see franchises owned by good people, but DeDobbelaer had (or raised) enough cake to pay a premium, and that trumped everything else. It always does, and financial capacity is THE centrepiece of the league’s “vetting process.” Can’t have an undercapitalized owner.
Today, forcing DeDobbelaer to put the team up for sale is unlikely to happen. The league didn’t even approve his purchase until July 07, 2022 (almost exactly 10 months ago). Who knows the details of his financing agreements with lenders and minority partners. We don’t even know for sure if all elements of the July 2022 purchase agreement with the previous ownership are fully satisfied yet.
Now, in terms of the sanctions against him, my reading of the league’s announcement is that he interfered in the independent third-party investigation. The OHL said investigators interviewed approximately 15 former players, coaches, staff and team officials over a period of several months. The authors of the report stated that DeDobbelaer “violat[ed]the league’s confidentiality directive regarding the investigation.” We know what that’s code for, and given the extraordinary events of the past year or so (Hockey Canada and major junior hockey government inquiries), I’m truly floored that a junior hockey team owner would do something so … well, let’s settle for “dumb.” Poking your nose into a player maltreatment investigation is brazenly stupid.
Of course, he’s only suspended from being the GM. He’s not suspended as the owner. He’s likely forbidden to have any role in Hockey Ops, but he still runs the rest of the show and the league’s announcement makes no mention of any removal from the league’s Board of Governors, so he likely continues the same way as Flint’s Rolf Nilsen when he was suspended.
The whole thing is just ugly, and IceDogs fans deserve so much better.
ontariohockeyleague.com
niagaraicedogs.net
