McNall Is Forever Indebted to His Gold-Plated Charm

We should be grateful, one supposes, for any hockey news that lands on the front page of the sports section these days.

But this?

Bruce McNall, agreeing to plead guilty to federal charges that he defrauded banks for than $236 million before and during his tenure as owner and president of the Kings?

Bruce McNall--who not too long ago was the most powerful man in hockey, who brought both Gary Bettman and the Mighty Ducks into the NHL (for better or worse) as chairman of the league’s board of governors--facing a maximum prison term of 45 years?

The numbers boggle the mind.

At $50 million per NHL franchise, McNall allegedly defrauded enough money to buy nearly five teams. That’s almost a whole new division. Imagine such a new-look NHL, complete with Northeast, Central, Atlantic, Pacific and Lompoc divisions.

And 45 years? On paper, that would take inmate McNall to the year 2040.

Will the Kings have won the Stanley Cup by then?

Will the NHL have played a game by then?

Realistically, McNall probably faces a sentence between five and nine years, and after all the legal outflanking and recircling is complete, it could shrink even further.

But what lies ahead for McNall is not half as significant as what he has left behind--a 10-year trail of deceit and chicanery, according to federal prosecutors, that casts a pall over everything McNall accomplished and attempted to accomplish in hockey.

McNall brought Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles. Yes, he did, but by what means and to what end? Along with several players and draft picks, McNall threw $15 million into the pot to complete the Gretzky trade in August of 1988. You wonder about those $15 million now. Was a sham company propped up to serve as pseudo-collateral for a loan McNall otherwise could not qualify for? Were those funds diverted from another McNall holding that would hit the canvas in bankruptcy court, leaving so many creditors empty-handed?

Gretzky himself was collateral. Was the most sensational transaction in NHL history simply another way for McNall to trump up his portfolio? McNall the coin collector often stated that he who owns the most valuable coin holds the power in the market. The same principle applies to hockey. In Gretzky, McNall had the most valuable hockey player in the world. And that enabled McNall to make friends, impress potential clients and influence bank loan officers.

If Gretzky happened to make the Kings Smythe Division contenders in the process, well, talk about your happy byproducts.

McNall used Gretzky. Befriended him, trotted him out at cocktail parties, talked him into recycling some of those huge paychecks into buddy-buddy joint business ventures.

McNall and Gretzky bought football teams together, $450,000 baseball cards together, million-dollar race horses together. And, when McNall needed to use one of those horses as collateral in 1991, court papers assert that McNall told the bank he owned “100%” of the horse, when Gretzky was actually in for 25%.

McNall and his executives allegedly did this without Gretzky’s knowledge, meaning they deceived Gretzky. In the 18-car pileup of charges facing McNall, this amounts to little more than a scratch. But the gall involved is overwhelming--trying to slip one past the most revered name in the game in order to plug one leak in a rapidly cracking empire.

McNall made the Mighty Ducks possible. You know the fable: McNall and Michael Eisner are pals, McNall talks Eisner into investing in the NHL, McNall clears the way for expansion into Orange County and everybody lives happily ever after, to the tune of 17,174 a night at The Pond.

Hockey in Anaheim generally has been a good thing--at least when there was hockey in Anaheim--but McNall’s motives here were less than purely altruistic.

By late 1992, when the Ducks were born, McNall was badly strapped for cash. Put an expansion team in the next county, less than 40 miles away, and--presto!--a mammoth indemnity fee is headed for the McNall coffers.

As it turned out, McNall received $25 million for his part in the creation of the Ducks, the largest indemnification in league history. The Ducks are to pay the entire amount over a period of years, but again, collateral is collateral.

(At present, the note is held by Bank of America, which suffered losses of at least $40 million in its dealings with McNall.)

Moreover, the Ducks are here because the Minnesota North Stars are not. Stars owner Norm Green originally wanted to move his team to Anaheim before the 1993-94 season, but McNall, then chairman of the board of governors, talked him into a detour to Dallas.

Why? Because McNall preferred an expansion team in Anaheim, bringing that $50 million expansion fee with it. That way McNall gets richer, the board of governors gets richer, everybody’s back gets scratched.

Except Minnesota, as close as it gets in this country to Canadian hockey culture, loses its major league hockey team. Disgraceful, yes, but a small price to pay if it keeps McNall, the man who was essentially running the league then, afloat for another 12 months.

This was around the same time McNall was brokering a commissionership for Bettman. Look where that’s gotten us.

Together, Bettman and McNall were going to drag hockey by its cauliflower ears into the ‘90s, and, sure enough, they have succeeded. Work stoppages, bankruptcy proceedings, plea bargains, pending prison terms--yep, everything about the sport is up to date.

For nearly a decade, we have wanted to believe that McNall was good for hockey. McNall wants us to believe it still. Hasn’t Gretzky been great? Haven’t the Ducks been fun? Didn’t we get a charge out of the Kings’ playoff run in ‘93?

Even giving McNall that much, in light of the evidence now before us, one more question must be asked.

Was it worth it?