A few weeks back, my brother was frustrated dealing with a difficult client, a family business now being run into the ground by the next generation.
“In most cases, the second generation blows all the money,” explained my brother, who works in IT finance and has seen a few things in his day. “By the time the third generation rolls around, the business is usually gone.”
It appears there will be no third-generation involvement in the Burke family business: the Niagara IceDogs.
Head coach Billy Burke and his brother, Joey, the team’s general manager, have been suspended indefinitely by the Ontario Hockey League for offensive and misogynistic language both men used in a WhatsApp group conversation.
The brothers, both minority owners of the club, showed a sense of entitlement that many in the hockey world had already suspected.
At the recent Top Prospects Game in Kitchener, an NHL scout had a decidedly negative view of the organization, unaware at the time that the brothers were ensnared in a more recent mess.
Almost always, when people are put in charge whose chief qualification is birthright, there is a bad outcome.
Billy Burke played for the Colts for a season 16 years ago. He was a curious inclusion on that year’s team because he was three years older than most rookies. Burke had already played a year at Queen’s University, where he returned after making little impact in Barrie.
After Queen’s, where he also played football, Billy joined the IceDogs. Their parents, Bill and Denise, had recently bought the team and moved it to the Niagara Peninsula from Mississauga. Their parents had a good run, not least because they hired Marty Williamson away from the Colts and installed him as coach/GM. The IceDogs also moved into a sparkling new facility, the Meridian Centre, while their parents were in charge.
There is another junior hockey example that has both a local connection and a sad, cautionary tale of family business dynamics: the Barrie/Niagara Falls Flyers.
The Barrie Flyers twice won the Memorial Cup and were a league power for most of their decade-plus in town. Owner Hap Emms moved the team in 1960.
Whether with the Flyers, or the St. Catharines Black Hawks that he later owned, Emms also had success in the teams’ new homes, winning the Memorial Cup in 1968 and another Ontario Hockey Association crown a few years later. In an ironic twist, two of the best players Emms brought to play in Niagara were Barrie boys: Steve Atkinson and Mike Gartner.
With his father getting on in years and involved with his NHL patron, the Boston Bruins, Paul Emms was ceded more responsibility as a coach. You likely don’t need to be told how the son fared in that role.
Paul, who died earlier this year at 90, had played for the Flyers in Barrie. He wasn’t a terrible player – probably about the same as Billy Burke was 55 years later – but likely would have never played at such a high level if not for his father.
Hap Emms, who died in 1988, eventually saw the writing on the wall – his son was more interested in music than hockey and by all accounts was much better at it – and sold in Niagara (after the St. Catharines stint).
The IceDogs’ fortunes went south when the boys took over the team a few years ago. Williamson was gone by then and coaching Brock University, where he was before returning to the Colts last year.
Until this week, the IceDogs’ greatest indiscretion was illegally paying side-benefits to two players. With the sanctions levied back then, while considerable, it was also generally understood that the IceDogs may have gotten off lucky.
Billy and Joey Burke weren’t so lucky this time around. But the good fortune that has defined the sons could soon reappear for both them and their parents.
Rumours are swirling that the club is about to be bought by deep-pocketed new owners. A $20-million figure has been suggested, an outrageous amount of money for a team playing in a league still struggling post-pandemic to put bums in seats and attract eyeballs on television.
The Guelph Storm were sold earlier this season; the previous owners weren’t necessarily looking to sell but were given little choice once an outsized offer was tabled. Such is the false economy that has sprung up after COVID: rich people, with little to spend their money on the last two years, are willing to overpay to acquire play-things.
Hap Emms would turn in his grave if he saw the type of numbers being thrown around in the Storm sale and the one that is expected to go down with the IceDogs. That’s because the spend-thrift Emms, while far from perfect, was a self-made man who built a hard-earned legacy.
The thought of team owners riding off into the hockey sunset with gobs of cash in their pockets is much harder to stomach.
