Grizzlies: A season to remember

Holding a microphone and a glass of wine, Aspire Group CEO Bernie Mullin recounted the hurdles he faced as president and CEO of the Denver Grizzlies minor league hockey team during the team’s 1994-95 launch, its lone season in Colorado. Mullin addressed a room full of former Grizzlies staff and players at a 20th reunion, held June 27 in Denver.

Former Grizzlies President and CEO Bernie Mullin (right) and former employees John Boos and Jeffrey Mandel (left) pose with the IHL Turner Cup, which the team won in 1995. All photos: COURTESY OF DENVER GRIZZLIES / PAAT KELLY

Mullin said the Grizzlies’ few employees were crammed into a corner at Denver’s old McNichols Sports Arena. The team’s marketing budget was just $3,000, and the entire organization shared one computer. Some staffers propped old doors onto filing cabinets to use as desks.

And since Denver’s track record with pro hockey was dismal — no less than seven major and minor league teams had failed — nobody gave the Grizzlies much hope.

“People thought we would fail,” Mullin said. “That was the most fun, most enjoyable, and quite frankly the biggest success of my career.”

During their single season in Denver, the Grizzlies won the International Hockey League championship, as well as awards for regular-season and playoff MVP, coach of the year, rookie of the year and goaltender of the year, among others. The team also averaged 12,094 fans per game.

Following the success of the Grizzlies that season, the NHL relocated the Quebec Nordiques to Denver (to become the Colorado Avalanche) in May 1995. The move forced the Grizzles to relocate to Salt Lake City, where they remain today.

David Elmore, who owned the Grizzlies, thanks former staff, management and players at the reunion.

“Eventually the NHL would have come to Denver,” Mullin said. “We proved what a great hockey market it could be.”

The reunion celebrated the former staffers for the Grizzlies’ success. It also gave Mullin, team owner David Elmore and other former employees a chance to tell stories of grassroots sports promotion in the days before social media and mobile marketing.

Elmore, who owns six minor

Mullin says the Grizzlies proved Denver’s mettle as a hockey market.

league teams including the Grizzlies and the Class AAA Colorado Springs Sky Sox, said he thought Denver’s young, affluent population in the early 1990s would support a hockey team. He lured Mullin away from the MLB Colorado Rockies with the promise of being in charge of all aspects of the Grizzlies, from coach selection to marketing and ticket sales.

“Bernie wanted to test his own ideas,” Elmore said. “I told him he’d be his own boss and could put everything together.”

Mullin’s promotion strategy was distinctly grassroots. Kelly Williams, the team’s vice president of marketing, recalled driving around Denver in a team-branded van teaching kids and coaches how to play roller hockey. She organized pop-up hockey parties in local parks and visited area schools to distribute free ticket vouchers, which could be redeemed alongside an adult ticket purchase.

“We gave away so many tickets — it was all about butts in seats,” Williams said. “There was no such thing as branding or target marketing.”

Former Grizzlies PR director Michael Haynes and Mullin look through the team’s old program.

The team signed a small deal with local Pizza Hut restaurants to advertise family meal deals, as well as a deal with Grease Monkey for an oil-change promotion. Williams borrowed stock footage of grizzly bears from a local wildlife society for the Grizzlies’ television commercials. The team placed a Jacuzzi along the boards and gave ticket upgrades to fans who agreed to roar like a bear. Rinkside seats cost $15.

Michael Haynes, now the Avalanche’s play-by-play television announcer, oversaw public relations for the Grizzlies from a temporary trailer outside of the arena. Haynes said he received dozens of phone calls every day from local fans asking basic hockey questions such as the rules around substitutions and off-sides.

After arriving in Denver, Haynes walked into the Grizzlies’ offices and saw dozens of team ticket reps sitting at tables, making cold calls.

“Bernie hired people who were young and single and had the time to put in a lot of hard work and also have fun,” Haynes said. “And it worked — they got the Grizzlies into the community.”

Fred Dreier is a writer in Colorado.