On hedge fund manager and Tampa Bay lightening owner turning around the franchise:

Once Vinik bought the Light­ning, their for­tunes be­gan to change al­most im­me­di­ately. It started with his first—and ar­guably his most im­por­tant—de­ci­sion: De­spite hav­ing no ties to Tampa, he re­lo­cated from Bos­ton with his fam­ily and made it his full-time home. None of the Light­ning’s other own­ers had ever lived in Tampa full-time.

At the time Vinik was con­sid­er­ing buy­ing an NHL team, he says, a dozen ei­ther were avail­able or could have been avail­able. He ex­plored sev­eral of them, from the Coy­otes to the Dal­las Stars to the New Jer­sey Dev­ils. He set­tled on the Light­ning in part be­cause he knew he would move to which­ever city he chose. En­sconc­ing him­self into the fab­ric of Tampa was “part of the se­cret sauce,” he said.

From a hockey stand­point, Vinik has fo­cused on the grass-roots, know­ing the Light­ning needed to in­tro­duce the sport to a re­gion that didn’t grow up with the game. With the help of the NHL’s in­dus­try growth fund, the Light­ning are giv­ing away 100,000 street hockey balls and sticks to kids in their mar­ket, as well as com­plete sets of gear to 500 schools. Light­ning CEO Steve Griggs said the team now has 15,500 sea­son-ticket hold­ers, up from about 3,000 in 2010. Youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Tampa Bay area has grown nearly 70% since 2013, ac­cord­ing to USA Hockey.

from wsj