New owner leads turnaround of Chicago team

By Ben Klayman

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Not long ago, before basketball legend Michael Jordan arrived in Chicago, roars frequently shook the rafters in an arena just west of downtown.

Chicago was hockey mad.

Greats like Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita brought a championship to the city in 1961, but the Chicago Blackhawks have not won since. Fans have suffered the longest such drought in the National Hockey League -- even as the Bears football and White Sox baseball teams celebrated titles, and the Jordan-led Bulls captured six championships in the 1990s.

The NHL's lockout three years ago that threatened to bring an entire sport to its financial knees, sent angry fans packing as players sat out the season.

The frustration was perhaps greatest in championship-starved Chicago -- where the rabid Blackhawks' fan base has also suffered ownership that didn't appear to be bothered much by mediocrity.

But now, a new owner with a familiar name wants to make Chicago a winning hockey town again, but that will involve undoing some of the harm done by his late father.

"It was anger, and then it was indifference, and that's the worst thing you can have. That turns to irrelevance," William Rockwell "Rocky" Wirtz said recently of the feelings fans increasingly felt for the team his grandfather bought in 1954.

"Chicago is a hockey town," he told Reuters in an interview from his office at family owned Wirtz Corp. "Bobby Hull was as great a superstar for people who lived in the metro Chicago area as Michael Jordan was."

The Blackhawks' turnaround mirrors the NHL's resurgence since the 2004-2005 season was eliminated when the owners locked out the players in a bid to cut salaries. Since then, the sport has rebounded with three years of record attendance.

Wirtz Corp is one of the largest privately owned companies in Illinois with $1.4 billion in annual revenue and 2,900 employees. In addition to the hockey team, it owns one of the largest U.S. liquor distributors and has interests in insurance, banking and real estate.

'HIGH EXPECTATIONS'

Wirtz, 55, calls the fans' anger for his late father Bill -- derisively nicknamed "Dollar Bill" for his frugality in paying players -- "old baggage."

When Wirtz took over after his father's death from cancer in September, he moved quickly to change the club's culture, including signing a deal to televise several home games -- so the fans "can see us score goals" -- and then expanding that to air every game for the next three years. His father had angered fans by refusing to air most home games in fairness to season-ticket holders.

However, many thought Wirtz's coup was the late November hiring of John McDonough, president of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, to the same position with the Blackhawks.

"We need to take that beautiful arena and we need to bring back the roar and fill that building every night," McDonough, 54, said. "Expectations are sky high."