Blues owner Tom Stillman, 10 years in: On the road to a Stanley Cup and the need to ‘evolve and improve’ (2024)

Sitting in a booth at a restaurant in Clayton, Blues owner Tom Stillman surveys the draft beer selection, makes a selection and moments later is taking a sip. This isn’t a celebration necessarily, but it kind of is.

This summer is the 10th anniversary of Stillman and a group of 15 local investors purchasing St. Louis’ beloved hockey franchise in 2012, when Stillman told an audience that included NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, “We see the franchise as a hometown institution, a critical city asset. We see ourselves more as stewards of the Blues than as owners. We will make decisions in the best interests of the franchise, our loyal fans, and the city of St. Louis.”

A decade later, and a Stanley Cup later, the ownership group remains intact and committed to the city.

Blues ownership group

As Stillman places his beverage back on the table, The Athletic asks him if it feels like it has been that long since he stood at the podium at what was then Scottrade Center — now Enterprise Center, which is one of the many reminders of how much change has happened.

“It doesn’t seem like 10 years at all,” Stillman says. “It seems like three or four (years) most of the time. Other times, it seems like a really long time. But for the most part, it doesn’t seem like that long.”

At the time Stillman took over the team from Dave Checketts’ group, he wasn’t thinking a decade down the road because there was so much work to be done, and it was, in his mind, a long-term proposition.

“I don’t think short-term stewardship of an important community asset like this is very good for the community or the institution,” Stillman says. “Also, based on the finances at the time, it sure didn’t look like some kind of a get-rich-quick scheme either.”

The Blues spent $58 million of the $64.3 salary cap in 2011-12, Checketts’ final season. The team was swept in the second round of the playoffs that season. It had missed the postseason in five of the previous six years.

Checketts had also taken up-front payments on TV and catering contracts, meaning there were a lot of years left on those deals and a smaller amount of future revenue coming for the new owners.

“I guess the toughest challenge was just the most basic — there was too much going out and not enough coming in,” Stillman says. “So it was a combination of controlling operating expenses by doing some downsizing, especially within the business side, while growing the top line, particularly with ticket revenue. We just had to get our average ticket price up somewhere in the neighborhood of the league average. It was so far below at the time.”

The net gate receipts ranked 27th of 30 teams, according to the team, and it was vital to move up that list.

“The previous ownership group had a practice of immediately dropping prices whenever there was the slightest concern about a game, and so people realized, ‘Just wait, they’ll drop their drawers,'” Stillman says. “We had to establish a little more discipline there.”

But raising ticket prices and sticking to them had to be commensurate with the value of the product.

The blueprint would be a business department and a hockey operations department that, while independent, would rely heavily on one another.

In 2014, the Blues hired Chris Zimmerman as CEO of business operations, and he set his sights on growing revenue, which, in turn, would allow general manager Doug Armstrong to spend more on the roster.

Stillman’s original idea wasn’t to spend to the cap, though.

“I went into it not planning to be a cap team; you could be in that next rung of teams and strike that balance,” Stillman says. “But after a very short time in the role, I was persuaded otherwise. Considering all sides at that point, I felt like we had to put a competitive team on the ice. That was the most important thing, to bring people in the building and make everything else happen. That was a fairly pretty big departure from our pre-transaction projections.”

Zimmerman brought an outside perspective to the Blues’ offices that was important. He had worked 11 years at Nike, helping launch the company’s golf brand in the mid-1990s with a young, amateur golfer named Tiger Woods. In 2003, Zimmerman was named president of Nike’s Bauer Hockey operation. In 2006, he began a three-year run as president of the Vancouver Canucks, and later worked at Easton Sports.

“Things started to change dramatically when Chris Zimmerman joined the organization,” Stillman says. “He’s an experienced and seasoned executive in the sports world and he has a real talent for growing the culture, making sure people feel part of what we’re doing and making them understand what we’re doing. He helped cultivate a different standard of quality in what we do.

“We’re no longer checking boxes. The aim was to do what the top sports franchises in the professional world do. You can’t expect an organization to try to be the best if you don’t set that as the standard. You can say, ‘Well, not in St. Louis.’ I don’t buy that. We may not have the revenue number of the Maple Leafs, Rangers or Canadiens, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be one of the top organizations.”

In 2020, the Blues would reach that pinnacle, selected as the Sports Business Journal’s sports team of the year.

On the hockey side, Stillman says that Armstrong already had a similar standard.

“As I’ve said probably too many times, I think Doug is the best in the league, and that’s well beyond the current trade that’s under consideration,” Stillman says. “We haven’t been cycling so far down that we get top draft choices. It makes it a lot more difficult to build a roster that way, and yet Doug has been able to do it.”

The 2021-22 season was Armstrong’s 12th with the Blues, and in the 10 years since Stillman’s ownership group has been in charge, the club has the fifth-most regular-season wins in the NHL. Only Tampa Bay (448), Pittsburgh (442), Washington (439) and Boston (436) have more than St. Louis (434).

Meanwhile, the Blues have gone to the playoffs in nine of those 10 years and are tied for the sixth-most playoff wins in that stretch. The list is Tampa Bay (84), Pittsburgh (60), Boston (57), Chicago (50), Washington (47) and St. Louis and the New York Rangers (46).

It was a combination of the work done by the business and hockey departments that began to increase the value of the product. Suddenly, not only did fans want to be in the building, but NHL executives were watching, too.

“The league could see our financial metrics, but just dealing with Chris and the other leaders on the business side, it was more professionally run,” Stillman says. “And with Doug as a general manager, he’s highly respected by the league. Those two things together, you could feel they started to look at us very differently, and you could feel things changing.”

The Blues were named hosts of the 2017 Winter Classic at Busch Stadium, and a year later, they were awarded the 2020 NHL All-Star Game at Enterprise Center. And while they didn’t know it at the time, before that All-Star Game would be played, the organization would also have the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, which it won over Boston in seven games.

“We set the Stanley Cup as a goal, and we weren’t just saying that,” Stillman says. “It wasn’t just about the revenue or the finances. We’re competitive people. We wanted to win for St Louis and the fans. You hear about families who had been Blues fans for years and their one dream was to win the Stanley Cup, and we wanted to come through on that.”

In the decade since Stillman took over, the Blues are the only team to host a Stanley Cup Final, All-Star Game and Winter Classic.

Following the Stanley Cup win, the Blues’ ownership reaffirmed its commitment to the franchise in the summer of 2019.

TowerBrook Capital Partners, which was the largest investor in the Blues under the previous ownership, still held the largest stake in the club and had decided to sell. But instead of that stake going to an outsider, the local group of investors stepped up and purchased 100 percent controlling interest in the club.

“That was a long process,” Stillman says. “The ideal outcome was to have that interest purchased strictly by members of the group, and that’s what happened. None of this would have been possible without the commitment of the other 15 members of the ownership group. They stepped up on May 12, 2012. They stepped up again when we purchased the rest of the TowerBrook interest, and they have been steadfast in their support through the last 10 years.

“That’s the attitude and approach the group has. The majority of the group got involved much more for civic reasons than any financial reasons. I think they all feel a responsibility to do the right thing for the franchise and for the city. That’s just sort of in the DNA of the group.”

With 10 years at the helm, the current group has matched the Blues’ original owners, the Salomon family, for the longest tenure. (Mike Shanahan’s run included a stint with Kiel Center Partners, and the combined timeframe of his leadership is a bit unclear).

“That’s pretty crazy,” Stillman says. “I didn’t think it would be shorter than that, but when you put it that way, it’s interesting.”

After every playoff series that features a memorable moment, Stillman thinks about how long it will live with the fanbase.

“Whatever it is, people are going to be talking about it for a generation: Remember that series? Binnington-Kadri! It’s incredible to step back and realize, ‘This is going to be part of the legacy of the franchise,'” he says. “It won’t necessarily be connected with any of us, but there is a history that matters to the people who have followed the team and who will follow the team in the future.”

A future that’s in a lot better shape now.

In the past 10 years, the Blues have played to 96 percent capacity at Enterprise Center, which looks a lot better these days after ownership’s $170 million, three-phase renovation project. Sponsorship revenue has tripled, and ticketing more than doubled, and the team is now 15th in the league in gate receipts.

Meanwhile, the Blues also helped develop the $83 million, state-of-the-art Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights, where they practice and which doubles as a hockey hub for local and national events.

“Things came together: the ownership group, Doug and Chris, everybody who’s working every day to improve the way we operate, and fans and local companies have come in droves to support us,” Stillman says. “But if you take the approach — ‘Why don’t we just keep cruising?’ — you’re going to fall behind. That’s not my approach to life anyway, and it’s turbocharged in this situation, the feeling of responsibility to our home city. It’s a matter of wanting to still be among the top franchises, and that means continuing to evolve and improve.”

But for a brief moment, Stillman allows himself to celebrate with another sip.

(Photo of Tom Stillman: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)