The news media loves drama. And, why not? It sells papers, improves ratings and gets people talking. But quite often a sound bite doesn’t capture the whole story. Lately, Raleigh news outlets have focused on a dim future for the ‘Canes—bringing up a potential sale, flashing figures

of revenue loss and focusing on empty seats. It’s enough to make fans question the future of NHL in Raleigh but what’s the real story? We went straight to the source, Don Waddell, president of Gale Force Sports and Entertainment (the parent company of the Carolina Hurricanes), to find out what’s next, the truth behind selling the team and why he answers every email from fans.

It seems like every year you have to dispel rumors that the team is moving.

I was here about a week, and owner [Peter Karmanos, Jr.] said, I’m thinking about selling the team—which I kind of knew, I wasn’t completely naïve. At that time he was 72 years old. When Pete said he was going to look at a secession plan, people ran with it, that the team was leaving.

The team’s not moving. We’ve had lots of tire kickers but a couple serious buyers, [and] the question never comes up whether we can move this franchise. People see what’s happening to Raleigh. You can pick up any publication, and Raleigh is in the top growing cities, best places to live. Will the team eventually get sold? Yes. This could take one year; it could take five years.

Low attendance has come up in the media as well. Can you talk to about this issue?

Individual ticket sales go hand in hand with team success. We were in last place then we started winning some games. Since Dec. 21st to date, we’re up over 2,600 paid people per game but everyone wants to talk about what it looked like in November. We had Pittsburgh and the Islanders here—we had 33,000 people over two nights.

In one [recent] article, they ran a picture from a November game. It was the second time they ran that picture in the newspaper, and it was the weekend we had 33,000 people [in attendance]. I’ll take all the criticism we deserve, but that was one article I think was unfair to this organization.

So how do you manage misleading news?

I do about eight to 10 speaking [events] a month. The best thing for us is word of mouth. You can see me at every game floating around. Fans tend to find me, and they all have my email address. I’m a huge believer in that if they want to send something to me then I will respond to everyone.

You respond to every email?

I’ve always been that way. Last year our tickets went up in price, and I had some of the worst emails I’ve witnessed in my position over the last 25 years. I call them. You get them on the phone, their tune changes—“I was having a bad day that day, I’m sorry.” Last year, when we put out our season tickets, the price was going up. We sent out a letter, and I put my email address right on there. Sure enough, I probably responded somewhere to 700 to 800 emails. I met them at gates, between periods. I always believe if I can get people for a few minutes, whether it’s on the phone or in person, I have a better chance of explaining what we’re doing and why we do it.

You clearly value every fan.

Absolutely. It doesn’t matter if they spend $10 or $1,000. I walk around out front of the building as fans are coming in and talking, just to get the feeling of what people are thinking. You can head off a lot of issues if you know about them. If you don’t know about them, you can’t fix them.

We wer e blessed in ’06 but that’s a rarity. How long will it take to start seeing results?

We spoiled everyone too quickly! Prior to last year, we were just trying to band-aid [the team] to make the playoffs. Ron [Francis] said, “We need to build through our younger players.” We’re the youngest team in the NHL right now—we’re playing with six to seven rookies every night.

It’s hard to make predictions. I did it once and I paid for it but the way we’re progressing now, there’s no reason why we won’t be a competitive team today and moving forward. We can actually see it on the ice. We said it would be three years but I think we’re ahead by a year. They won the cup and didn’t make the playoffs for the next two years. We don’t want to be a team that goes once every five years. If we build it right, we’re not talking about making the playoffs, we’re talking about how far we can go in the playoffs.

Can you share your plan for the team?

We made the decision to trade players, pick up draft picks and some young prospects. When we go to the draft in June, we have nine picks in the first three rounds. You have to have other assets if you’re going to make trades. A lot of things happen in the summertime through free agency, but if you don’t have chips in your pocket you can never play the game of poker.

There’s a salary cap in our league. You don’t want to get to a point where you can’t keep one of your young players.