CRAVEN GIVES VEGAS HELPING HAND
Former Flyer putting imprint on expansion team
The first time Murray Craven and Bill Foley crossed paths was in Whitefish, Mont., in the midst of building a hockey rink.
A ski-resort town of less than 7,000 people, Whitefish had an outdoor rink for hockey. With the changing climate, it got to the point where it was only useful three months of the year, and residents such as Craven, who had young kids at the time, were crossing their fingers hoping it would stay cold so they could play.
Craven was a veteran of 1,071 NHL games, 523 with the Philadelphia Flyers between 1984 and 1991. His hockey retirement brought him to Whitefish, and he got into construction — both commercial and residential — so he knew the costs and became the fundraising chairman of what is now the Stumptown Ice Den.
He would hit up people such as Foley, a life-long businessman with a 40,000-acre working ranch who has had a hand in everything from wineries to financial services.
“Whitefish is a very unique place that has a real eclectic group of residents and part-time residents that come from all over the country and Canada, and it’s a resort area,” Craven said. “I was just able to tap into the folks that had the means to get us kicked off. It’s hard to raise $3 million $50 at a time, but I had initial donors that would give me six-figure numbers. I really got off to a fast start.”
In 2003 the rink opened as an indoor building and now operates year-round. Thirteen years later, Craven is working on a much bigger project with Foley, the owner of the NHL’s next expansion franchise in Las Vegas.
“When I started first dabbling with the NHL and the concept of having a team in Las Vegas,” Foley said, “I still am a complete novice, but I was really a novice.”
Craven and Foley became golfing buddies in Montana, and one thing led to another. The further Foley got in the process with the league, the more he’d ask Craven. It wasn’t just that he played in the NHL, it was that he played for six teams in the NHL and saw how all of them operated.
“What that did was it gave him an experience level to see how a really good organization is run from a player’s perspective and then maybe how a team wasn’t running as efficient and wasn’t running as well and maybe was not as responsive to player needs and fan needs,” Foley explained. “He got to see that, too.”
STARTING A FRANCHISE
To say that two neighbors started an NHL franchise might be a bit of a stretch.
“Use the term loosely. It is Montana,” Foley said. “We lived about 3 miles apart. I lived at the north side of the lake, and he lived on the east side of the lake, a little more toward town.”
When it was clear that the NHL was awarding Foley a franchise, he had Craven by his side as an adviser, working rather silently to help him along. When things got situated over the summer, Craven finally got a title: senior vice president.
“I think Murray probably wanted to have a different role, but the reality is an expansion in any sport, but especially in the NHL, is very complicated,” Foley said. “I felt I needed to go with people with deep experience, people who really got it one way or another.”
Craven helped find his future boss, former Washington Capitals general manager George McPhee, who will serve the same role with the club. Someone doing as much advising as Craven might have a bigger title with another club — team president is usually top of the hierarchy — but that’s something he’ll have to earn.
“I’m an organization guy,” Foley said. “I was in the Army. I want to have a chain of command. George and Murray have to work it out, and they did.
“I’m sure he probably thought he should be president of hockey operations, and it was my job to convince him that what he got was the right position for him.”
The idea for Craven is to keep moving up. It’s not uncommon in hockey. Just look at his former teammate, Ron Hextall, now general manager of the Flyers.
“Not sure when you’re young like that that any of us appear to be ready to be a general manager, a president or a coach,” Hextall said. “It’s more the mind. One thing about Muz is that he was a real sharp guy. He had a great mind, but in hindsight if you look back and say, ‘Is he equipped for it?’ as he gets older, yeah, he probably was.”
STILL BUILDING
Craven is trying to build a new rink these days, and this one is a little bit bigger.
The Las Vegas franchise already has a game rink in T-Mobile Arena, right off the Strip.
Next on the list is a practice facility. They broke ground in early October and the plan is to be up and operational by Sept. 1.
“When you have a project this size, it’s going through permitting, getting through the necessary channels and getting the sign-offs on everything,” Craven said. “Once we start pouring concrete and rocking and rolling, it’s just construction at that point. Right now we’re still going through the permit checks and all that, and that’s agonizingly slow.”
The rink is keeping him from some of the other parts of his new job, such as evaluating the upcoming free agent class, identifying primary targets and setting up a minor league franchise in the American Hockey League. It’s that side of the game where his career will take new steps.
“When you sit around and talk to guys that have been scouting this league for 20 years, they have a book on everybody,” Craven said. “They just rattle guys off. They know this, this and this. I’m not going to get there in one year, but maybe in two or three years down the road I’m going to sit in on those conversations and say, ‘OK, this is where this guy fits in my eyes.’ I think I’m going to be good at that because I played for a tremendous amount of time and I have a feel for judging talent.”
While construction helped Craven get his foot in the door — and helped build the door frame — he’s more than just a builder now.
“I don’t think I ever really left the game,” Craven said. “I think I just left it to a different degree. I always stayed in contact with everybody. I always watched a ton of hockey, but I just wasn’t in that frame where I was day to day going into an office. That’s where it’s kind of changed. Now I am. Now I’m sitting here in an office talking about a future franchise.”
Isaac writes for the (Cherry Hill, N.J.) Courier-Post, part of the USA TODAY Network.