Eagles won’t give back Kelly Cup thanks to a million-dollar dispute of “integrity”
WINDSOR» The ECHL wants its trophy back.
Martin Lind wants his money back. Neither side is going to get its way. Instead, the Kelly Cup — the one the Colorado Eagles hoisted after winning the 2017 and 2018 ECHL championships — sat comfortably in its case last week at the offices of Lind, a Northern Colorado businessman and the Eagles’ owner.
To Lind, the Cup held hostage is an $800,000 example of fraud and how the ECHL dishonored the game of hockey.
Traveling hockey trophies are supposed to travel, but the ECHL first-year expansion Newfoundland Growlers — who indirectly replaced the Eagles when Colorado joined the American Hockey League as the Avalanche’s top affiliate to begin the 201819 season — hoisted a Kelly Cup replica after winning the league championship last week.
Lind refuses to let his Kelly Cup go, accusing the ECHL of cheating him out of up to $800,000 for making an expansion-fee sale to Newfoundland instead of allowing the teams to negotiate a transfer fee. And since he’s not being sued by the ECHL and he can’t bring suit to the league because of a signed legal document, Lind will keep the Cup as an example of his outrage with how he was treated in the Eagles’ seventh and final year in the “double-a” league.
“I would implore them to sue me. I would welcome it,” Lind told The Denver Post. “There couldn’t be a better thing for me. I’m Brer Rabbit, please throw me in that Briar Patch. Because I can’t bring suit because of the covenant I signed — like all the members did — but I’m certainly entitled to counter-claims if they sue me. So please, I beg them to come sue me.”
Lind said he didn’t want to go public with his protest until former ECHL commission
er Patrick J. Kelly — whom the Kelly Cup is named after — disclosed on radio in Toledo, Ohio, on May 31, that a new Cup was made because the Eagles refused to return the previous one (which is actually a third of four).
“They should have kept their mouth shut,” said Lind, who paid a $500,000 exit fee before being denied an opportunity to negotiate with Newfoundland. “No one would have ever known the difference. I would have been out (and not gone public).”
Lind said his offer to return the Cup for a refund of his $500,000 exit fee was ignored.
ECHL commissioner Ryan Crelin, Newfoundland chief operating officer Glenn Stanford and Avalanche assistant general manager Craig Billington were each interviewed for this story.
Crelin, who took over as commissioner to begin last season — the Eagles’ first in the AHL — said he still has a good relationship with Lind.
“Yeah, other than he won’t respond to my emails,” Lind said of Crelin. “My last email to him was (January) 2019 — now a year later — because they wanted the Cup back. This stuff all happened in January of ’18. Low and behold we win the Cup again. We did backto-back (2017-18) and they started wanting that Cup back, and it really wasn’t that big of a deal except for that attorney for the league just kept saying, ‘refer to paragraph blah, blah, blah, blah, blah because you can’t sue us. So too bad.’
“That’s what he kept telling my attorney. So I asked him, ‘Hey, can you find the paragraph where I’m required to return the Cup, Mr. Smart(aleck)? Tell me where I’m required.’ So Ryan says, ‘Martin, honor the game!’ And I just said, ‘Don’t tell me about honor. I don’t even want to start that conversation with the way I’ve been treated.”
The months in question.
The Eagles, Avalanche and AHL agreed to partner in the summer of 2017, and Lind — who paid $300,000 for his ECHL franchise fee in 2011 — said he sent his $500,000 ECHL exit fee to the league on Sept. 20, 2017.
While the Eagles began their final ECHL season of 2017-18, Lind and the league were looking for a replacement team for 2018-19 in corroborative fashion. If they found an adequate new franchise, the new team would negotiate a transfer fee with the Eagles. But Lind signed a legal document in which The Post acquired, saying he had until Dec. 15, 2017 “to present an applicant for transfer of controlling interest of its membership and transfer to a new home territory.”
In hindsight, Lind said he shouldn’t have put a deadline on selling his interest. But he claims Newfoundland’s interest in becoming that applicant was withheld from him, and ultimately, his inquiries to the league were ignored, the deadlines passed and Newfoundland paid a $1 million franchise fee to the ECHL. The Eagles got nothing out of the sale and Newfoundland was announced as an expansion team on March 13, 2018.
Crelin, who was the ECHL’S chief operating officer at the time, said in January 2018 that Newfoundland had no arena lease and was six months to a year away from operating. But in a Jan. 8 email to then-echl commissioner Brian Mckenna that was obtained by The Post, Lind was furious that his mid-season packet ahead of the Jan. 16 owners meeting at the all-star game in Indianapolis had “application for an expansion membership” on the agenda.
Lind said he flew to Indianapolis for the meeting to confront the situation but the item was taken off the agenda. Less than two months later, the expansion team in St. John’s (Newfoundland) was announced.
“They happened to come into our league in March (2018) because it all got worked out. But that wasn’t the case in January, and all the (Colorado) exit transition stuff happened even before the season started of 2017-18,” Crelin said. “Everything was bythe-book, bylaws signed. They had an opportunity to sell it, to transfer it. I’m sure they had some conversations but as far as I know, nothing ever came to fruition.”
Said Lind: “I was never told that Newfoundland was in the market for the commodity that we had for sale. I was never afforded the opportunity to talk to a group that wanted in.”
Stanford, Newfoundland’s COO, said he and his staff “were certainly aware” of Colorado’s pending departure from the ECHL before they paid the $1 million expansion fee to the league. Lind said he would have started negotiations with Newfoundland at $800,000.
“We were dealing directly with the league office, just following any protocols they had,” Stanford said. “That’s what we did. We took direction from the league office and that’s where we ended up.”
Mckenna resigned Feb. 18, 2017, effective at the end of the 2017-18 season. Efforts by The Post to reach Mckenna were unsuccessful.
Crelin maintains the ECHL did nothing wrong in accepting Newfoundland’s $1 million expansion fee.
“Colorado exited our league, signed all the documents, treated with respect and by the book per our bylaws,” he said. “(Newfoundland) — they came to the league saying they were interested but they didn’t even have a place to play for six months to a year … They did come to our league meetings in January (2018) — not with an application, not with a lease to play — just looking for a longer-term view.”
The commissioner added that the ECHL isn’t suing to retrieve the Kelly Cup in Colorado because it’s not worth it.
“By the time all that shakes out, I would have presented three (new) Kelly Cups,” Crelin said. “It’s a shame but it is what it is.”
Colorado’s supporting cast
The Avalanche supports Lind and the Eagles in their dispute with the ECHL. The Avs are only in charge of player-personnel and other related on-ice hockey decisions with the Eagles, who own the AHL franchise and lease the Budweiser Event Center in Loveland from Larimer County.
“Martin has been open and transparent with his communications with us from the onset, and that dates back to the process of transitioning from the East Coast league to the American Hockey League,” Billington told The Post. “We recognize it’s a business dispute with the ECHL and we understand the parameters of it. And at the end of the day, we’re a proud affiliate with the Eagles and Martin Lind. That won’t change.”
Lind won’t keep the Kelly Cup forever. He joked that ebay could be an option but he won’t profit from it.
“I’d like to give it back to them (ECHL) or the (Hockey) Hall of Fame or something. But I think they have some explaining to do to the industry,” Lind said. “Honor and integrity should not leave the game at the dasher boards. It’s such a great game and such a great institution and I honestly can’t believe they’ve done this to me, because we were a role-model citizen for them.”