Destocki Is Getting Bullfrogs in Playing Shape

The Bullfrogs are a leaner, less flashy, more efficient club these these days thanks to their new general manager, Bob Destocki.

Since being hired this spring, Destocki, 56, has given the rudderless front office a direction. New faces are everywhere, and Destocki, a hands-on guy, is managing finances more tightly than ever.

He has banned visitors, particularly young children, from routinely entering the Bullfrogs’ locker room, a sticking point with players in past years. He has opened an area adjacent to the locker room where fans can meet with players if players choose to do so.

There are no more lavish, costly pregame meals at the Pond, where the Bullfrogs used to host hundreds of guests before each game. And even though the team’s owners have said they would like to get games back on radio, Destocki sees last year’s radio budget of about $56,000 as excessive.

“Having worked with Bob in the past, I know that he brings in the people that he wants, puts them in the positions that he needs and then lets them carry out their duties,” said Jim Mirabello, the Bullfrogs’ new media director, who worked with Destocki in Huntington, W.Va.

Destocki replaced former Orange County radio personality Bob Elder, who left midway through last season in a disagreement with team owners over salary and perks.

Destocki’s background is in minor league ice hockey, youth ice hockey and the entertainment business. A Chicago native, he was a high school ice hockey coach and later handled music promotion for several production and motion picture companies.

In the late 1970s, he helped to start a series of Olympic-style, high intensity youth soccer camps throughout North America. The Mighty Ducks’ Paul Kariya and Richard Park are camp alums, playing there as teenagers. Destocki also coached several youth-level ice hockey teams to national-class titles.

In the early 1990s, he purchased a share of the Huntington, W.Va., franchise in the East Coast Hockey League and, most recently, was one of two founders of the West Coast Hockey League, which wrapped up its inaugural season this spring with five teams in Texas and one in Albuquerque. Six more, including a team in Louisiana, are expected next season.

Smooth, candid, almost California laid-back, Destocki has followed professional roller hockey over the years and is intrigued by its potential.

“There is a future for the sport, but there are some obvious things that have to be ironed out,” said Destocki, adding he is most concerned about the management of Roller Hockey International.

“If the owners and the managers of the league all get on the same page, this league would do very well for itself,” he said.

Destocki says the short RHI season--about four months--makes it difficult to market.

“I think a lot of these players would give up ice hockey to play this, especially the guys toward the end of their careers if the season were five or six months long,” he said.

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The Silver family, which owns the financially strapped Bullfrogs, intends to sell up to 30% of its interest in the team through a public stock offering, Stuart Silver, the chairman and operating officer, confirmed.

Shares will go for $2 and could be on the market as early as July 17, Silver said.

Silver says the stock venture is intended to raise funds to buy out Nelson Silver, Stuart’s brother and Bullfrog chairman and executive officer. Also, it might, perhaps, help to finance a new ice/roller hockey arena the Silvers hope to get approval to build near Ontario Airport.

Nelson Silver runs a Santa Monica car rental business, and it was never a secret that he believes the Bullfrogs, founded by his father, Maury Silver, are too financially unstable for the family good. Nevertheless, Nelson Silver denied that he is being bought out. The brothers verbally sparred over the issue in the locker room Wednesday after the Bullfrogs’ 6-5 shootout victory over the Blades.

“The Bullfrogs are not for sale,” Stuart Silver said. “This is one way to sell Nelson out of the picture 100%. That’s all we are doing.”

Nelson Silver said the team needs more money to stay afloat.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “This is about raising some money so we can run this company effectively. We can’t put butts in the seats, so we have to do something.”

Announced attendance is running as much as 5,000 a game below last season’s. The team collects most of its revenue from the sale of tickets.

The Sacramento River Rats offered $1 shares in its club last year, and it’s believed Sacramento’s controlling partner, Larry King, who also is RHI president, may take the league public in the near future.

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The Bullfrogs have asked host Sacramento to replay their game of June 19 rather than accept Anaheim’s forfeit.

The Bullfrogs refused to skate at Sacramento’s outdoor arena because the floor buckled under the intense heat and humidity and the advertising signs on the dasher boards were affixed with protruding metal screws. The SportCourt playing surface there is the floor from the Pond that was sold to Sacramento this spring. It is not designed for outdoor use, according to Stuart Silver.

Several Bullfrogs said Sacramento players apologized for conditions of the facility.

Workers have since removed the metal screws and plugged floor and dasher gaps, and before last Saturday’s game against San Jose, the court was covered with a tarp and electric fans were used to keep temperatures down.

“There were gaps in the dashers where a hockey stick could get stuck and a player could stab himself with the handle,” Bullfrog goaltender Rob Laurie said.

King has said he believes outdoor play will become common in the RHI, but that it will take time to fine-tune it. That didn’t sit well with St. Louis Viper Coach Perry Turnbull.

“That [rink] has been an embarrassment,” Turnbull said. “If that’s the direction we’re headed, then Larry King can run his league his way and the rest of us will go somewhere else.”

Bullfrog Notes

The proposed Silverdome project has competition in Ontario, where an owner of the minor league Rancho Cucamonga Quakes baseball team and Las Vegas Thunder of the International Hockey League, is vying to build a 12,000-seat minor league ice/roller hockey/basketball arena. According to Lee Mayfield, deputy director of the city’s redevelopment agency, both proposals were reviewed by the city council in closed session recently and a decision as to which to pursue is expected as early as next month. The city reportedly is supplying $7 million in redevelopment funds to purchase a 43-acre site near the Ontario Airport for an arena. Mayfield said groundbreaking is expected early this fall, with the first puck dropped in the fall of 1998. The Silvers have secured offers from the West Coast Hockey League and RHI founder Dennis Murphy to place teams in the new facility. . . . With the return of team captain and all-time leading scorer Victor Gervais comes rumors that crowd favorite Savo Mitrovic also will rejoin the club. Not so, according to Bullfrog Chairman Stuart Silver, who said he hasn’t heard from Mitrovic, who injured his groin last season, in months. . . . The Bullfrogs have hired Christopher Wyland, 30, of Mission Viejo, to be director of sales and marketing. Wyland has worked for the Kings and Angels.

The Bullfrogs Notebook runs every other week during the summer. Suggestions are welcome. Call (714) 966-5904, fax 966-5663 or e-mail Paul.McLeod@latimes.com