Feeling like a billion

Whomp!

Two hours before the Ducks took the ice against the Ottawa Senators in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals, the team’s owner was, by his own account, “a total wreck.”

Waiting in an office at the Honda Center, Henry Samueli wriggled his feet and laughed in edgy bursts. His hand kept slapping the sofa on which he sat.

Whomp!

“I couldn’t go in to work,” he said. “I read some e-mails in the morning, but I was too nervous to really do anything useful today.”

Two years ago, when the Orange County billionaire and his wife, Susan, bought the Ducks, it was no secret that basketball was his favorite sport. Some wondered if he was merely keeping the arena warm until he could secure an NBA franchise.

But something unexpected happened. As Samueli put it: “I got hooked.”

Last Wednesday evening, he showed up for the game in team colors -- black jacket and an orange-striped tie -- looking younger than 52 with slim features and razor-short beard.

His newfound love for hockey is more than an affinity for skating and stickhandling, the thrill of a winger rushing on goal. As observers of the game have noted, the Ducks share a few of Samueli’s chief characteristics.

Competitive to the point of combative. Relentless.

“That’s probably accurate,” he said. “And it’s something I’m very proud of.”

Within a few hours, he would have something else to boast about -- bringing West Coast fans their first Stanley Cup. The championship put a stamp on an unlikely pairing between the computer-chip magnate and his team.

*

The son of Polish immigrants, Samueli grew up in West Hollywood stocking the shelves at his parents’ liquor store and rooting for the Dodgers and Lakers.

Any deeper involvement in sports seemed unlikely as he earned a PhD at UCLA and taught electrical engineering in Westwood and at UC Irvine. In 1991, he went into business making semiconductors with Henry T. Nicholas III.

As Broadcom Corp. grew to $3.6 billion in annual revenue over the next decade or so, Samueli earned a reputation as a top engineering mind and -- despite his friendly nature -- a forceful businessman.

“Both of our attitudes toward the competition, I think, was to scorch the earth,” Nicholas said in an interview last year. “We see our competition and want to annihilate anything that surrounds them.”

Samueli prefers a sports analogy, saying: “The high-tech business, the semiconductor business, it’s very competitive. You’re out there every day slugging it out, no different from players slugging it out on the ice.”

Not only did Broadcom thrive in the marketplace, it occasionally landed in the news for battling competitors and regulators in court. In 2002, Samueli and Nicholas resigned from the Orange County Performing Arts Center board of directors because fellow members were suing Broadcom in an unrelated dispute.

That same year, Fortune magazine listed Broadcom executives at No. 2 among the nation’s “greediest” for selling billions in company stock before the market dipped. (Qwest Communications and Kings owner Phil Anschutz topped the list).

Yet, with a personal wealth that Forbes magazine put at $2.1 billion, the Samuelis also became known as major philanthropists. The Samueli Foundation, headed by Susan, donated $180 million to Southern California causes that ranged from education to opera. The engineering schools at UCLA and UC Irvine were rechristened in Henry’s name.

As for team ownership, Samueli said, that just sort of happened.

Midway through 2003, he and his wife were introduced to hockey by watching the Ducks streak through the playoffs before losing to the New Jersey Devils in the finals. That fall, the Samuelis purchased the management contract for the Honda Center.

Soon after, Disney began to shop the team.

In one regard, 2005 wasn’t the best time to buy, not with the NHL reeling from a lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season. But the price was bargain-basement cheap at $75 million. By comparison, Forbes had valued NHL franchises at an average of $163 million only a few years earlier.

“This is not the greatest investment in the world,” Samueli said. “But we were fortunate enough to get a very favorable price.”

*

Despite making the finals only two seasons earlier, Samueli’s new team needed help. Hockey people say he did two things right.

First, he launched a search for a general manager, consulting other owners and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. Almost everyone, he says, suggested Brian Burke.

Though Burke was a controversial figure in the game, Samueli loved his candor and fiery nature. The feeling was mutual.

“Once I met them in the interview process,” Burke recalled of the Samuelis, “I desperately wanted this job.”

After putting a general manager in place, Samueli made his second astute move -- he got out of the way.

“The owner’s job is to hire the general manager,” he said. “The general manager’s job is to run the hockey team.”

Burke brought in Randy Carlyle as coach and stocked the roster with veterans Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger and Teemu Selanne. He discarded players who didn’t fit an aggressive style.

Though Samueli had a plan to make the team break even within five years, the free-agent signings proved he wasn’t cutting corners.

He and his wife also scored points with the fans by making it clear they were locals -- they live in Corona del Mar, their French Country-style garden overlooking the ocean. They insisted orange be part of the team’s new colors and made community appearances mandatory for players.

“Any fan wants that stability,” he said. “I think it makes a big difference for the community to know that Susan and I are just as big a fan as anyone and that we’re here for the long run.”

In the wake of this spring’s Stanley Cup run, the team expects to sell 14,000 season tickets, double the total when the Samuelis arrived.

*

From the perspective of the NHL headquarters in New York, Bettman has seen Samueli change. The Ducks’ owner, he said, has become “a hockey guy ... just what the doctor ordered.”

But not all has gone smoothly, not with Broadcom embroiled in recent federal investigations and civil litigation.

Samueli, Nicholas and other executives are suspected of improperly backdating stock options to increase their potential value. While scores of corporations have been accused of doing the same thing, the Broadcom case appears to be extensive, the company lowering its reported earnings by $2.2 billion to account for the backdating.

Broadcom says an internal investigation exonerated Samueli, finding he relied on professional advice in the matter. Furthermore, the company says, he did not receive any of the stock options.

But plaintiffs in civil court might argue that he profited by selling Broadcom shares whose value was inflated because the true cost of the stock options had been concealed.

For Southern California hockey fans, the controversy might revive memories of former Kings owner Bruce McNall.

In the early 1990s, McNall oversaw a team that acquired the legendary Wayne Gretzky and reached the 1993 Stanley Cup finals.

Within a few years, however, McNall had pleaded guilty to four criminal counts, including bank fraud, and was sentenced to prison. The Kings were sold to new owners, Joe Cohen and Jeffrey Sudikoff, who drove the franchise into bankruptcy.

The Kings have struggled ever since.

A source close to Samueli said the Broadcom co-founder is “fully cooperating” with federal investigators, a departure from his position earlier this year when The Times reported that he had declined to speak because prosecutors would not assure him that he was merely a witness, as opposed to a target of the probe.

How much financial exposure -- if any -- Samueli might face as a result of the issue isn’t clear.

Asked if fans should worry that he might someday be forced to sell the Ducks, he got a quizzical look on his face.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he said. “It certainly doesn’t worry me.”

*

The night before his team won the Stanley Cup, Samueli arrived at a Newport Beach hotel to serve as keynote speaker for a daylong gathering of the semiconductor industry.

The man who introduced him gave a long-winded exposition on Samueli’s technical and business credentials before adding: “And, of course, there is another thing on his resume -- he’s the owner of the Ducks.”

The audience applauded loudly.

“I get more notoriety these days for the Ducks than anything else,” Samueli quipped. “Maybe I should just talk about hockey for the next hour.”

Founding Broadcom made him well known in high-tech circles. Donating to the Opera Pacific raised his profile in the performing arts world. Owning the Ducks has been another story.

“Sports is pervasive,” Samueli said. “Everybody knows.”

This kind of celebrity can be fun, people on the street talking about his team, but it can also be troubling for a man who normally shies from the spotlight.

“I’m sure someday there will be negative exposure and I’m not looking forward to that,” he said. “You never want to read bad things about yourself.”

Even as the Ducks raced through the playoffs, Samueli peeked ahead to less-pleasant times. As a Lakers fan, he knows that no amount of drive or resolve can forestall the cyclical nature of sports. No team can win forever.

“The same thing will happen to the Ducks someday and I have to be ready for that,” he said.

In this way, owning a team is not like nurturing a business that figures to remain successful into the future. Even as the Ducks have appreciated to a current estimated value of $157 million, Samueli cannot rest easy.

“The emotional ups and downs are amazing,” he said. “We lose a game, I get totally depressed. We win a game, I’m elated.”

That explains why he fidgeted at the Honda Center -- all that foot wriggling and hand slapping -- hours before his team won the Cup.

Hockey is going good right now, and the new owner figures he’d better enjoy the moment.

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Times staff writers Lisa Dillman, David Haldane, Michael A. Hiltzik and Eric Stephens contributed to this report.

david.wharton@latimes.com