Seymour Knox IV- Former NHL Owner

Mike Hartman, performance mindset strategist. This is Develop the Mindset of a Champion with former Stanley cup champion Mike Hartman. Welcome to another episode. Our guest today is Seymour Knox, former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. Seymour, it's so great to have you here on the podcast.

Mike, it's great to hear your voice and thank you for including me.

So I think it's really important that the people know. I mean, Buffalo is such a unique place. It's one of my favorite places on the planet. I tell people all the time that Buffalo is like my home away from home. And your family owned the Sabers. You've done so much in Buffalo and I would love for you just to share your story, the family story. Take us back to the Buffalo Sabre days when it was purchased in 1970. So a lot of us would really love to hear your story.

Well, Mike, believe it or not, the story goes even further back than 1970 with my dad and uncle and the Sabers and they were a part owner, believe it or not. Well, actually, let me back up a little bit even further. The Sabers came into existence in the mid-1960s. We tried to get into the first expansion when St. Louis and Philadelphia, Minnesota, the Flyers all came in at the same time along with the Oakland Seals. And unfortunately my dad's bid at that time to come into the NHL had been denied and they became part owners of the Oakland Seals back in the mid-1960s. One of the conditions that my dad had was that he become an alternate Governor to the NHL. And at that time there were only 12 teams in the league. So in 1970, the league decided to expand again and they brought in a west coast team, which was the Vancouver Canucks, and they brought in the Buffalo Sabres.

Well, that's fantastic. So we're going to go back a little bit in history because your father and your family started. It has to go back many generations and you started in the five and dime business, is that correct?

Yes, believe it or not. My great grandfather, his name was Seymour Knox and he was cousins with Frank Woolworth, who was a little bit older than he was. And my great grandfather was a left his town of Russell, New York, then went moved to Watertown, New York at the age of 16 and he left on a. You have to go back into the 1860s when this was transpiring post Civil American Civil War. He was on a buckboard and had a horse and went into the town. Automobiles hadn't been invented, the railroad were just starting out. And he started working for a shop with a shop owner. And then a year later, he got interested in having his own shop. He was very entrepreneurial. So as luck would have it, he moved out to Michigan to work with a relative in a sort of the beginnings of a 5 and 10 cent store. He and his cousin Frank got together and they opened up a couple stores as time moved on, they ended up having a big department store in Detroit, downtown. They had a big store in Chicago and they had a lot of stores in Canada as well as here in Buffalo and Utica and Rochester.

Well, that's fantastic. Wow, that, that's amazing. I think I remember it was Woolworth. Right. Because my family used to go to Woolworth in Michigan.

Yeah. So it became. They had a big merger in 1912 and there were a number of other family relatives at that time who had different stores. I think Great Grandpa at the time had 112 stores and the Woolworths had a number of stores. And if you go to Toronto and you go to. I know you've been there over your hockey career, but the old Hudson Bay store was originally an SH. Knox store.

Yeah, sure. And I think what I read was like the family merged. So all the family came together. There was over a hundred stores and everybody merged together and it became this huge like five and dime and where people went to go to get a lot of their everyday essentials. Almost like a Walmart today.

Yes. And it's funny you should mention Walmart because as Woolworth had its ups and downs over the years, they sold their Canadian operations to Walmart.

And that's. So I could tell you a quick story. There's. There's a group in Charlotte that I met and they. I owned a gym and the family there had a huge, huge store called Family Dollar, which I'm sure you know of. They're all over the United States. And Family Dollar, the Levine family had the Family Dollar. And I happen to know the family as well as some of the relatives. I had a gym in what was called the Jewish center, which the Family Dollar. I mean, their name is right on the Jewish center. And a lot of the relatives helped me get into my business there. So I learned a little bit of history how, how that works, and it's quite fascinating. They started the same way. They start with a couple stores. Before they know it, they have businesses all over the United States. And this is what the. This is the entrepreneurial side of things that I really want to get in a little bit, just more about your family. Because then now in Buffalo you had so many other different things going On, I mean, you had the Knox Albright Museum. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yes. Actually, that's one of the oldest art museums in the world. It was started in, I believe, 1867. And my grandfather got involved with that in the 1920s. His mom was also involved prior to that. And grandpa Seymour. Seymour II went on to become one of the preeminent art collectors in the world in the 1940s and 50s with the abstract Expressionists and Pop Art and that. They built a new wing in the art gallery. In 1962 it opened. It was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. But he was also a Buffalo based architect and had been friends with grandpa growing up. And now, 60 years later, Mike, we're doing another addition. We're going to be adding close to 40,000 square feet of exhibition space, educational spaces, a new underground parking garage and much more green space.

Great. I remember the team, the Buffalo Sabres, we had one of our team photos there. All of us dressed in. We had our dress slacks on and a nice sweater. Might have been a Buffalo Sabre sweater. And we took a team picture there. And it was. That was one of the giveaways that the. Your family gave out to a lot of the fans. And I still have that. My father collected a lot of my old hockey memorabilia. And I looked in the, in the, in the bottom of. I might have said Wonder Bread or one of the sponsors was. Was on there. So I. I do remember those days. And you know, it was special too, going back. Your family did something that was just so special. Right around Christmas time we went and I can't remember, it was on Main street. But what, but the house that your family lived in, you may have grown up in that house. We had our Christmas team party over at with your father and you were there. And I remember Bob Suos and a lot of the management was there. Nordy.

Yeah.

And we had our team dinner there. And I thought that was so special back in those days.

Well, it was a lot of fun and those were terrific days. We used to. Dad used to have a birthday party. His birthday was March 9th. And he'd have a big team party at his house on the 9th if it worked out. There was usually a game that particular weekend. And the best part, best part about it, Mike, was that you weren't traded. That's true.

The trade deadline was there.

Exactly right. Trade line was usually around the 6th or the 7th. And so everybody that was there, they were all relieved that they weren't In Winnipeg or. Or another unnamed cities in those days.

Yeah. So what, what was your fondest memory? Because I remember during the games, if, if we won, we. Then you would come into the dressing room. Your father would come into the dressing room. I know your father's brother would come into the dressing room. So we called it the brass. I hope that's the appropriate word. The brass would come in, but we. You only came in if we won. We knew that the owners were not going to come in if we went because it was so important in Buffalo. Like the tradition was. If anybody understands Buffalo, they always put together a team, like a blue collar, hard working team with, with some superstars on it. So we were known in Buffalo as long as we came out and played hard every night and had that winning mindset that your family was happy, the fans were happy, and we would see after the game. Can you go a little bit more into that? Like coming into the dressroom after the game and you were greeting us with a smile. Was that a tradition that your family.

Yes. And it started. There were a number of different traditions that they had, but that one started right away in the 1970s. And as it evolved, we also took in advertisers or other supporters of the club to come into the locker room traditionally after the team won. When we were in the Stanley cup playoffs in 1997, 98, the team was going through a number of transitions and we had a number of people that came into the locker room even when the team was losing. So that's. But it was, it was the playoffs. So everybody was, you know, we were happy to be there. We had, you know, a terrific run. We beat Toronto to get into the finals. Then we had the series with Dallas with the infamous Brett Hull standing in the crease. Goal. Against Dominic Hashik, who was our superstar, one of our players that particular year.

Okay, so turning the clock back a little bit, and I have to ask this question because a lot of entrepreneur. This is first, this is for everyday people, entrepreneurs. And what was the biggest challenge? Owning a National Hockey League team, especially back in. And I can't say those days because it wasn't that long ago you sold the team. What was the biggest challenge of owning a team?

Well, there were. Along the way, when my dad and uncle had it, there were. There were a number of challenges. Mike. One of them was the first big challenge, at least for Buffalo, was expanding the arena. The War Memorial at that time, from 10,000 seats, we put in the oranges. So they had a challenge of jacking up the roof, putting in all the steel, adding the oranges, and increasing our season ticket base from 9,000 to over to close to 15,000 in those early sabre years. Another challenge that came up right after that occurred in 1974. Guessing 1973-74, the WHA popped up on the scene and they had, you know, the Chicago Cougars, the Minnesota Fighting Saints, etc. Etc. And we lost the number of our players to the startup league.

I remember that in fact, one of them was Rick Dudley, because I think he went to Cincinnati or one.

Yeah, he went to the Cincinnati Stingers and, And played there. So that. And the Nordiques were there. The Hartford Whaler or the New England Whalers at the time were there. And there were a number of other.

Other Edmonton Oilers joined.

Oh, yeah, how could we forget the Indianapolis Racers that gave birth to. With Wayne Gretzky going up to the Edmonton Oilers.

And I remember Wayne Gretzky was the youngest player ever to play pro hockey then. I think he was just turning 17 and that was their way of getting him into the wha. In fact, I went to a couple WHA games when I was really little, you know, I was probably 7 years old.

And we.

We used to see the Michigan Stags.

Yeah, I was going to say the Michigan Stags.

Well, I remember that because growing up in Detroit, we couldn't afford to go to the Olympia. My father was starting out in his business. My uncle used to take me to many games and we'd go see the Michigan Stags. It wasn't till later that we would wait and try to scout tickets outside to go see the Detroit Red Wing. So I want to talk a little bit. So they have the traditional original six. So, you know, the Montreal Canadiens, the Boston Bruins, the New York Rangers, and just going back to some of the teams from the original six. And they've always kept the same logo. So if you look at any of the teams like the Detroit Red Wings, they have that. They have the wing. The Rangers pretty much have the same logo. I know they changed it once and they put New York across their jerseys, but for me, when they changed the Buffalo Sabre logo, it. It kind of took away for me a little bit because I'm so used to watching that logo from the 70s and the way they had the socks, they had the unique socks.

Who.

Whose idea was that to change the logo? And how does that work? Is that an organizational.

Well, Mike, it's funny you should mention that. Believe it or not, it was one of my projects.

Oh, that's funny.

I know we didn't talk about this in our, in our pre interview excitement, but that was one of my projects. We talked about having a hip hop snowboarding company for the logo. We knew that we were going to be building a new arena at that moment, in that particular moment in time, which was, was called the crossroads at that moment. And we needed to give the league a minimum of one year with designs because we had a lot of overseas manufacturers. And one of the problems that had been transpiring was that the Sabre's blue, for lack of a better word, had been bastardized. Black is black for the Bruins. We had a similar Blue to the St. Louis Blues and we had a similar blue for the Toronto Maple Leafs. And manufacturers were sort of goofing it up. They had light blue, they had a dark blue, they had a cerulean blue, they had a Mediterranean blue. We had, you know, our royal blue and even our, our colors over the years. From when Rawlings was first doing the jerseys at the beginning, you know, starter was doing jerseys, CCM was doing jerseys. And CCM at that moment in time was having their own issues that went into a, a bankruptcy. So they had taken our threads for our blue and gold. It would be the same thread that the Boston Bruins were wearing. And we were a much brighter yellow, as you know, at the time. So there were a lot of challenges. We knew we were going into the new arena, so we thought it's a good time to maybe come up with a new look for the team. And we hired a firm called Jagger, DePaulo and Kemp with Michael Jagger and his wife, and David Kemp was the other partner. And we found that firm through one of my school classmates, Jake Burton. His real name is John Carpenter, but he started Burton Snowboards. And at that time, all their boards were individually designed and had color patterns and that type of thing. And JDK was the company behind them. So we hired, ended up having a design contest. JDK won it and then they went to work. And we went from one mark to seven different marks. We had the B with the saber going through it. We had an S with the saber going through it. We had a buffalo sabers font that we had. We also had the, what people referred to as the goat head, but the goat head ended up selling all around the country, as opposed to a lot of regionalism. With the Sabre logo, we went from 24th in league sales that year to fourth overall. And one of the other things that transpired with the change of the new logo was that we were getting the hardest working teams Quote, unquote. And hockey. There we were winning and we were back in the playoffs again. We had had a little playoff drought prior to that. Wow.

I never, I never knew all that. I, I never. That never dawned on me that. It's funny, I learned. You learned. You're a Buffalo Saber and you learn something every day. So now I have a question for you. You ready?

I'm ready.

Okay, here it is. Do you have a favorite Buffalo Saber story memory that you could share with us with your dad, with the organization?

Well, I, I have a lot of them, Mike. I mean.

Well, share that favorite one.

Well, the first one happened in 1969. I was about 14, turning 15. I was at a boarding school called Brooks up in North Andover, Massachusetts. And we got a telegram saying that we got the team. So that was, that was a good start.

I'm sure that's a great field.

So.

So that's a great memory. So now that's, that's something that I'm sure was exciting because Buffalo really is known for a small market team. That's why players really like to play there. And a lot of players actually want to live there. They want to stay there because it is such a great place to live. It's economically feasible. It's a, it's a great location. It was easy to get to the games. I love playing for the Rangers, but I used to sleep in a hotel in the morning because I lived in Westchester, which was 20 minutes outside the city. But it could be two hours if you have to drive there on a day of a game. So after practice, I would just sleep at the hotel across the street, where in Buffalo you can go home and you're home in 15 minutes.

Yeah.

Then in, in traffic it's 20 minutes. So I know the players really love to, to play there. In fact, players even come back to Buffalo because that's where they want their, their home. So I'm going to give you some, some memories.

I do have more memories, Mike.

Oh, let's hear it. Let's hear, let's hear. Give me, give me one more.

Share one more with me as a. I went back to, ended up leaving Brooks and went back to Nichols, and I had the opportunity to play practice goalie with the Sabres. So that was a, A great thrill we had. Danny Lawson hit me in the collarbone with a slap shot.

Did you send him down to the minors after?

No, he jumped to the WHA and set a scoring record. But one of the great moments, actually, Mike, that you were just talking about was the strength of our alumni association. And I was very proud along with Jerry Meehan and Freddy Stanfield at the time to set up the Buffalo Sabres Alumni association. And we also set up the Buffalo Sabres foundation. And that enabled a lot of the local guys that were here that had retired, but they all love the game to be able to play other alumni teams and do good deeds around the city.

Well, Buffalo is known like Jerry Mann to me was such a. Such a gentleman. And I remember even the day he traded me, he pulled me in his office and had a really nice talk. So I. Buffalo had like such. That's. You always remember the first team that you were drafted to the most. It's so special. Like so the Buffalo Sabres is always. Is so special in my heart and especially I remember even like I was gone, I was five years out of the organization. I was. I had stops in Winnipeg and Tampa and then we won the Stanley cup in New York. And I remember receiving a letter from you. To this day I have that letter that you wrote, a full page letter right from the heart. And that was the classiest thing. And when people ask me about Buffalo, it's such a class. I'm trying to. The whole purpose here today. I want to talk a little bit about the entrepreneurial side the Sabers and some of the experiences that I had just watching the ownership things that you. You might laugh at and chuckle at, but I could remember 30 years later. So I really want to thank you for that letter. I don't know if you remember writing it, but I have that letter to this day.

Oh no, I do. I remember writing it and signing it. Even signing it finally too. But.

But such a class organization. I get chills when I talk about the Sabers. It was the. The best times of my life. It was a pleasure place that gave me an opportunity and I remember the craziest things. Now you're going to laugh at this. So I remember a lot of the owners in pro sports. They might sit in the boxes or they might. You don't see them. You think they're at the games. Every game it was like yourself. It was your mother and your father. You sat in the Golds behind the bench seat A, B and C. Now you might. You probably. How does this guy know that? Because I was sitting during the national anthem. I'm looking up. I said, wow, the owners of the Buffalo Sabres are watching us. So I don't. Did you sit there to. To make sure that we saw you to give us a little bit of make that way. Our jobs are on the line or how did the family sit right behind the bench like that? I've never seen that. Maybe that. Do they do in Montreal? Maybe the Canadians.

Well, the Canadians. The way that every arena is sort of different and every team, you know, as. As the game sort of evolved on the business side, every team had to hold, you know, a certain number of tickets in various sections of the arena for the players and their families. I know if we were playing in Michigan, I can't. Did you play with Danny Gear with Detroit?

No, but I know Danny well. Obviously, I was friend. I never played with him.

Okay. But Danny had a nickname of. His nickname was tickets, as. You know, and everywhere he went, he was always getting tickets for, you know, his friends or his family or whoever. So if your mom is. So in your case, Mike, if your mom and dad came in from Michigan with your brothers and your sister, you know, we would have those tickets allocated for you. And they might be in the. In the reds just above the Golds, or they might be in the Golds, you know, so that you could. Your families could see you in. Live in the flesh and playing and seeing how hard you're skating and all those other things that come along. Well, it was.

It was so special playing for the Sabres. And some of these people might say, oh, you're. You're a kiss up, or whatever. They might say, no, I'm just. I like to bring people on the show that were inspiring, and the Knox family was so inspiring. We had Rip, obviously, he's been there for. Was he. Has he been there 45 years? I don't know how many years.

I think. Well, he's still there this year, so I would say it's close to 50.

50 years, I remember.

And he was training camps before. Prior to that, with the Bisons. With Frankie Christie.

Yeah. In fact, the year I got to Buffalo, Frankie Christie passed away. Because that was a funeral I went to. That was my first year, 1986. That's how I remember. I remember that I was. We were at the funeral, but I could share this story. So I was playing with the Sabers, and when we're on the road, we get a couple tickets. And I was talking to Rip, and Rip said, hey, you got two tickets tonight? I said, yeah. He said, well, who's coming? Well, my father's coming by himself. He says, well, hold on, let me work something out. What you did for him. He was going through a tough time. He was, you know, he was getting divorced from. From his second wife, and he was coming to the game. So Rip says, don't worry, we get. They took care of my. My father in the hotel. They said, we got a room here. We have an extra room. They put my father down by the bench to the seat to the right, and really made it special for my father. To this day, he says that was one of his fondest memories, going to St. Louis. Called me last minute, flew from Detroit to St. Louis. So things that the Sabers did that people. It's. It's like, it's not really noticed with. With people. And these are the stories I want people to hear. They don't really hear, oh, they'll go to the game, they'll read the box scores. But they really don't get to see the internal stories of really what a family is all about when they say a family in sports. So I got to bring up another. Another thing. So in training camp, and this is all part of entrepreneurial ship and leadership. We would have our training camp. There's 50 players in training camp, and we'd have 50 players go to the country club. I can't remember what it was called. It was way out, like, 45 minutes.

Craig burn.

Okay. And I'm the one doing all the talking because I'm excited to talk to you, and you should be doing so I have to. So what? I'll never forget it. Every year, five years. Doesn't matter if you were drafted in the. In the. In the last round of the draft. Doesn't matter if. It doesn't matter if you were a rookie. It didn't matter. Any of those things did not matter. And all I remember was yourself, Seymour iii, the owner. I mean, it was. They would come around to the table and shake everybody's hand and. And wanted to get to know us. Hey, where you from? Tell us about you. It didn't matter who you were, were Mike Foligno, Pierre Turjon, or a player that was drafted in the 12th round. And that was so special. And that's part of leadership. And when you own a team and when you own a business, to me, that means the world. So to this day, I'll never forget how great you were and your family. And you really made us feel comfortable. So I hope I didn't answer your question, but I get excited when I talk about the Sabers.

It's the. No, it's great. It's actually wonderful. Wonderful to hear about it. So you were asking earlier in the conversation about entrepreneurial escapades, for lack of a better word. So running a hockey team opened up a lot of different entrepreneurial opportunities for many of our staff members that were there because we had a lot of different entities along the way. I don't know. Did you ever go to the Hatch Restaurant?

I may have.

I can't remember. Summertime. It's done. On the Waterfront.

The Hatch and the Waterfront. I may have. In Buffalo.

So we. We used to have something called the Odd Club where we had our Christmas parties there.

I remember the Odd Club. Absolutely. We had our Christmas parties right after practice. We would have our meal and then here you would speak and I would hear your father. Yeah, I remember those days so vividly.

We had a lot of people that worked for the team during the winter, and then the summer would come around and they'd all be pretty much unemployed. So we ended up getting a contract with the city of Buffalo to operate a waterfront restaurant. And we were able to serve a lot of Buffalo delicacies such as beef on whack and chicken wings and. And we scooped a lot of ice cream as well. But it kept a lot of our people that we didn't want to lose to be able to work. We also ended up buying a television station because there was a point in time where 2, 4 and 7, which were sort of the CBS, NBC, ABC stations, were having such good runs with LA law and things like that that they couldn't take the Sabers for 80 games plus playoffs. So we ended up purchasing a station called WNYB, channel 49. So that provided another opportunity for people. We bought a practice rink. You probably remember going to Saberland.

Yeah. Now, great memories in Wheatfield.

That's where we bought that and employed a number of people there. So you were saying what were some of your great moments earlier? And I had the opportunity, Mike, to work at every enterprise that we owned.

And that's great. That's such a great experience.

Three years in Rochester, we ended up winning the Calder Cup. I played practice goalie there a couple times, which was lots of fun. John Van Boxmeer and Jim Schoenfeld were our coaches. I got to learn to deal with Scotty Bowman, which was a terrific opportunity and great, great thrill. We started doing video at the games. We had a Betamax on the team bus. We were one of the first teams to do that. That was one of my projects. And we did pay per view when we had the league. We had a league lockout. And we had some practices that started after we did those pay per view in Canada for some of our Canadian season ticket holders who weren't really Coming across the border at that time because there weren't any games and our games also weren't carried on TV at that moment in time.

I remember a lot of that, especially during the lockout, because I was playing actually for the Rangers. And that year with the lockout, 1994. It was 1995, I think, when that, when the lockout happened and I trained with the Sabres in Buffalo, when I was really owned by the. Well, I was with the Rangers and some of the guys were living there, they said, sure, everybody could join. And the Sabers always had that open door policy. And I, I was 10 minutes away from moving back this year. We were thinking about moving back to Buffalo, but we decided last minute that that were. That were not. But it's such a great place. People like yourself, the. Everything that you've done for the city you continue to do is amazing. Now, I have to ask you one thing. I think you did or you still have a lacrosse team. Don't you have a lacrosse team?

Yes. We were really fortunate. I was down in Rochester at that particular point in my career, Mike. And we did an exhibition game between Team Canada and Team USA and we had 5,000 fans that showed up for the game. There were a lot of people that had followed lacrosse that were at St. John Fisher. Nazareth College was there, and Cornell and Ithaca weren't that far away. Cornell had very strong NCAA lacrosse teams, as did Hobart, which was about an hour away down in. On the lake. I'm drawing a blank on the name of the. The town, but Hobart College was there. One of my roommates from college went to see the Philadelphia Wings play the Detroit Turbos. And they said, boy, I bet this would go really well in Buffalo. And so we had a conversation about it. We made a couple phone calls. At that time, the league was owned by three people. Chris Fritz was the main guy and he had two other. Two other partners. And we ended up getting the Buffalo Bandits. And that provided a whole new opportunity. We put a lot of our younger staff members sort of in charge of that for season tickets and game day presentations and everything else that goes along with it. We had, you know, our colors were a little bit different, Mike, compared to the, you know, the beloved blue and gold that we all grew up on. They went to a black and orange, sort of like Halloween, Halloween colors. And we had music playing during stoppages and play. And while the game was going on, we had a 5,000 walk up our first night. Yeah.

Wow, that's not bad.

The tickets were, you know, like, I think it was 15 for a gold and, you know, 10 bucks for an orange. And we ended up having close to over 10,000 season ticket holders for lacrosse. And a lot of. A lot of the season ticket holders that were saber season ticket holders were mad because they couldn't get. We'd offered the lacrosse tickets to them and they said, lacrosse, I don't know anything about it. I don't want to do it. Well, was the hottest ticket in town. And people that have been in the golds for a long time when they wanted to get season tickets found out that they were. They were up in the oranges.

Well, think about it. I mean, you're playing lacrosse. There's no. You don't have any goalie gear on. That blew me away. My son was a long pole, so I learned a little bit. I told him, he asked me advice. I said, hey, if you're a long pole, as long as you win the one on one battles in your area and you take the ball and you move it to the person ahead of you, and if anybody goes into your territory, be clean. But you could whack a person with a stick. So I just want to conclude here, I just really want to thank you, Seymour, for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Great insight here. Great advice you gave to us. And I'm always going to be. I'm always going to say I'm very proud to be once a buffalo saber.

Well, thanks, Mike.

Thank you for coming.

My pleasure. I hope I see you soon.

See you soon.

Yeah.