Ilitch’s hallmarks: Loyalty, passion, pride
Classy owner earned respect of fans, players
When Steve Yzerman decided to leave the Detroit Red Wings to become general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2010, he drove to the home of Mike and Marian Ilitch to tell them personally.
The act said much about who Yzerman is as a person, but it might have said even more about who Mike Ilitch was as an owner.
When Ilitch died Friday at 87, his teams and his community lost a person who always made his ownership count.
Ilitch was a players’ owner. He also was a fans’ owner. He had the proper blend of loyalty and passion. He understood the value of his players and took care of them like they were family. But in his heart, he was always a fan. He had a desirable mixture of impatience and drive to push the Red Wings to become an organization that opponents have long admired.
The Red Wings won four Stanley Cups (1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008) under his ownership, and his fingerprints were all over that success.
When Ilitch bought the Red Wings in 1982, they had missed the playoffs in 14 of the 16 previous seasons. This season, the Red Wings are trying to qualify for the playoffs for the 26th consecutive season.
It is almost forgotten now that when Ilitch bought the team, it was both a managerial and competitive mess. At that time, the name attached to the Red Wings around town was “Dead Things.” The Red Wings had only 2,100 season ticketholders.
Ilitch earned players’ respect by paying top dollar for talent. He won fans’ admiration by exploring every option available to him to land the best player. He embraced free agency long before it was commonplace.
Although Ilitch was the founder and owner of Little Caesars Pizza, he never had a corporate approach with his sports teams. To him, owning a sports team was far less about making a profit than it was about trying to win championships.
He proved that continuously by overspending in the name of trying to pursue titles with his Red Wings and Tigers. He was the owner that every fan wants. He wasn’t meddlesome to the point of preventing general managers from doing their job. But he was involved enough to be a major advantage for his club. He rarely, if ever, said “no” when it came to spending money in the name of improving his team.
When I talked to Ilitch through the years, I always thought he was the most approachable workingclass billionaire I was ever going to meet. He seemed more like the guy next door than someone who could afford to own two major league sports franchises.
Ilitch’s loyalty also extended to his community. He believed in the city of Detroit when others were fleeing the city. He choose to restore the Fox Theater and move his Little Caesars corporate office downtown.
Ilitch’s death comes less than a year after Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider died. They were similar in their approach to ownership. They didn’t need anyone to make a report on how their teams were doing. They watched their teams perform and drew their own conclusions.
While other owners are as involved as Snider and Ilitch were, their deaths suggest we are close to closing the books on the presalary cap era when owner involvement played a heavier role in on-ice competition.
In 2006, I teamed with Art Regner to write a book about Red Wings’ history entitled What It Means To Be A Red Wing.
Mike and Marian Ilitch wrote the book’s introduction, and this was their last paragraph: “If you ask us what it means to be a Red Wing, we would say it means that everyone in the organization strives for success while conducting himself or herself in a classy and professional manner. It’s about pride. Little Caesars is a family business. And the Detroit Red Wings are a family organization. Pride has played an important role in the success of each venture.”
That is a fitting epitaph for Mike Ilitch.