MAJORBLOGS.net - 05.05.08 - OPINION - New Tulsa Oilers GM Taylor Hall had better hope that the third time is the charm. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the career of Mr. Hall after he left the ice in Tulsa as a player, let's take a trip down Flashback Alley. 

In September of 2003, in "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" (SZ. 09.10.03), we told you about the mess in Corpus Christi left by then general manager Taylor Hall and his front office team.  

Hall operated one of the best-attended hockey clubs in the Western Professional Hockey League (WPHL).  In spite of great box office numbers, the team's operation was financially troubled.  There were the whispers, rumors about some money in all-cash areas, like parking, not making its way back on to the books. There were concerns enough that minority partners of Bill Davidson, the Rayz then-owner,were suing to find out where all of the money in the operation was going.  Then the concerns grew to the point that the league stepped in.

The WPHL exercised its franchise-issue rights and removed Davidson's ownership group and Hall's management team from Corpus Christi's club. They put in a new owner, W.D. Frank, who then put in a fresh front office.

Hall and Corpus Christi cohort Kevin Simpson, now on the outs, went searching for greener ice.  After looking around, they launched themselves into the World Hockey Association 2 (WHA-2) as  part-owners and operators of the Alabama Slammers, a team playing in Pelham, a nearby community of metro Birmingham. They set up shop in the Pelham Community Center (PCC),  a small community ice rink being modified to hold a few hundred hockey fans. 

Hall became the Slammers' GM as well.

"Birmingham is in bad shape if they go forward with this deal,"  opined Gaylord Hoyt, a minority partner in the failed Corpus Christi ownership group, when MLN asked him for his take on Hall's new Pelham operation. Hoyt was involved in a lawsuit with the Davidson-run ownership group of Corpus Christi at the time over alleged bookkeeping irregularities.

We were a bit skeptical that Mr. Hall's ownership group had the capital to start up a franchise, given that GM work is not generally a deep-pockets building kind of gig, even at the reasonable team franchise fees offered by the WHA-2. 

In a telephone interview, Hall was quite emphatic with us that his ownership group had  the wherewithal to run a successful team for the next few years, during that tough start-up time that all new professional sports franchises in the minors face.

Hall boasted that his business plan, using a small venue and packing it, rather than a big costly venue, like the barn that swallowed hockey clubs in Birmingham, was a vastly superior business model that would result in a profitable franchise.  One of the failings of the many clubs that inhabited the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center (BJCC), was that the size of the venue made it seem empty even when there was a good crowd for minor league hockey there. On paper, Hall's claims made sense.

By the following year, when we ran the story "Movin' on Down the Road" (SZ. 04.30.04),  the club was in need of financial rescue. By estimate of David Waronker, the founder of the WHA-2,  at the time, the Alabama Slammers owed $200,000 to $300,000. 

We contacted a number of unpaid vendors, including the local Coca Cola distributor,  the Pelham Civic Complex,  and the city, which was seeking unpaid taxes. All told MLN that they were waiting to be paid, and would issue no more credit to the Slammers until all debts had been settled.

Over the course of that season, we also heard from a few players complaining about everything from unpaid bills on housing obligations, equipment troubles, medical/occupational insurance benefit issues, and transportation problems.

While one could write it off as player griping in a low-rent league, the phone calls alone, in our experience, are really unusual. While players may gripe internally about this or that, or even off the record to a beat reporter, it is almost unheard of to telephone the national media with working condition issues stories unless those circumstances were dire. 

In his last days as GM, Hall acknowledged his overestimation of the Pelham/Birmingham hockey market.

"It was a tough year financially for us. We lost a lot more money than we thought we were going to. We just expected to draw more fans," Hall told BirminghamProSports.com in the waning days of the Slammers.

As we mentioned in "Movin' on Down the Road," Hall faded into the background and Waronker effectively took control of the club, and its future, as he offered to white knight for the Slammers and pay off or down some of its debt to keep hockey going in Pelham.

Hall's whereabouts became very murky at this point. One story suggested that he would be working for Waronker at a new expansion club in the new league that David was moving his teams into (again). 

We had trouble finding Hall. When MLN tried to contact him for a response to the rumors that his team would be folding, in those final days of the Slammers, the telephone number for the club had been disconnected, and a call to the PCC resulted in a center staffer telling us that his understanding was that the office had been locked up and the staff let go.

When the team was contemplating moving to Birmingham's BJCC arena, it was Waronker, not Hall, making the inquiries.

Well intentioned or not, well designed or not, Taylor Hall's business plan clearly failed.  As the ship was sinking, the captain was not on the bridge. Waronker bailed and bailed, but was not able to right the team before it went down, turning the Slammers into the Exxon Valdez of Birmingham-area hockey. 

The local hockey fans became casualties of  big dreams.  Good intentions could not keep the lights on, and the players on the ice.  

Could it be that the area is just cursed for hockey? Was Hall just a cockeyed optimist or an opportunist without the capital to run the business of his dreams?  The opinions vary greatly depending upon with whom you speak. We will leave that for you all to argue about in the comment section, below.

What is undeniably clear is that, based on Pelham and Corpus Christi, Hall does not have the best track record for running minor league pro hockey operations. 

That the Tulsa Oilers ownership saw fit to revive his general managing career makes us wonder why, with hundreds of aspiring AGMs in pro sports, someone with less career baggage failed to get the nod.

Hall was well liked as a player in the Oil Capitol of the World, and he has a certain draw factor. Those are his pluses.

His handling of his posts in the WPHL and the WHA-2 both displayed, at the very least,  a profile for operating a sports business with a high-risk tolerance that has the potential to destabilize or shutter a franchise. 

Which begs the question: In these days of rising prices, with food and fuel weighing on the family pocket book, is Taylor Hall the guy that you want running your club if you want it to keep it running?

Even though the CHL would be left to clean up the mess of a potentially poorly-run franchise collapsing on itself, their merger  deal limits what they can do in such a situation.  The Oilers were a CHL club, not a WPHL franchise.

"Due to the nature of our agreement with the CHL Inc.," said Bob Hoffman, the Director of Media Relations for the Central Hockey League, "we do not have any jurisdiction over who they hire or the decisions they make in regards to running their teams.  Our approval deals solely with the WPHL License franchise members only."

Ultimately, that call goes to the Oilers' ownership. Maybe they know something that we don't. 

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be so hard on Taylor.  After all, he claimed that, even though it was his watch, that he was unaware of some of the problems going on around him in Corpus Christi.  Maybe, after Pelham, he  has learned his lesson. This edition of Taylor Hall, General Manager, is older, wiser, and maybe a bit better off for his experiences with the other clubs.

He will budget more conservatively.

There will not be those unpaid bills as there were in Pelham.

There will not be those nagging whispers, rumors about  money going off the books.

Hmmm...

I think that the famed actress Bettie Davis might have had the best advice for Tulsa hockey fans: "Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night."