Bullfrog Owner Says Team Will Return to Pond in ’99
Despite financial problems and the threat of a lawsuit from their former league, the Bullfrogs intend to remain in Major League Roller Hockey and play their seventh season at the Arrowhead Pond, team President and CEO Stuart Silver said.
“We are planning on playing next year at the Pond, absolutely,” Silver said.
Roller Hockey International, where the Bullfrogs played for five years, went broke at the end of 1997 and the Bullfrogs and the Buffalo Wings jumped to MLRH. The Wings announced this week that they will return to RHI when it restarts next summer with teams in either Ontario or San Diego, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Minneapolis, San Jose, St. Louis and Salt Lake City.
Bernie Mullin, RHI’s president and CEO, said he would like to see an RHI team back in Anaheim, either at the Pond or the Convention Center, but that it won’t happen this year unless members of the Silver family change their minds.
He claims RHI owns a 20% stake in the Bullfrogs and owns the Bullfrogs’ logo and team name. He contends that RHI simply loaned the Bullfrogs to MLRH while it took the year off to reorganize, and said the league will sue the Silvers to prevent them from using the Bullfrogs’ name and logo if they do not return.
“From Day 1 we have owned the name, we have owned the logo and we have asked the Silvers to provide us with proof that we don’t,” Mullin said from his Denver office. “We have never received any proof.”
Mullin also wants the Bullfrogs to give up their claim to territorial rights to a possible RHI team in San Bernardino or Riverside counties, which the Silvers were awarded when RHI was formed, and to surrender ownership of their team as terms for rejoining RHI.
Stuart Silver contends those demands are unreasonable and said his family believes the new RHI is not the same league his family helped found, therefore it has no legal claim to the Bullfrogs. He said the logo RHI claims to own was dropped after the 1993 season, and the current logo, which has been in use five years, bears little resemblance to the original.
“If they want that first logo, they can have it,” Silver said. “The logo we have now, we own it. We developed it.”
Silver acknowledged his family is under heavy fire from creditors for its financial dealings, which include filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection for Lillypad, Inc., the former parent company of the Bullfrogs.
“The last thing I need now is any more problems,” Silver said.
Among the creditors are the Pond, to which the Bullfrogs owe about $75,000 in back rent, said Maury Silver, Stuart’s father and team founder.