News Article: Plattner feature by Corey Masasik

[LadyStanley]

Paywall.

Interesting look at a lot of work/money he's invested around Pottsdam in Germany, including two museums.

He's expressed interest in having women's hockey team, and is passionate about Sharks. And has been able to attend many Sharks games this season.

Click to read more...

 

[Shark Finn]

Goes and voluntarily watches this team live. Now that's a dedicated owner.

 

[Hodge]

Pretty pathetic that Hasso is worth 10+ billion but apparently Becher needed to put together a full fledged pitch just to convince him to expand the Sharks front office in line with the average NHL team. And he needed to assure Hasso they'll pull the plug and go back to a "Doug hires his kids" model of hockey ops staffing if they don't see results within a couple of years.

We will never win with Hasso in charge.

 

[timorous me]

Paywall.

Interesting look at a lot of work/money he's invested around Pottsdam in Germany, including two museums.

He's expressed interest in having women's hockey team, and is passionate about Sharks. And has been able to attend many Sharks games this season.

This was a really compelling read. Most sportswriting on the internet these days makes me want to skim--this was the complete opposite. Such great work by Corey. Sad that he's not still covering the Sharks.

 

[hotcabbagesoup]

Pretty pathetic that Hasso is worth 10+ billion but apparently Becher needed to put together a full fledged pitch just to convince him to expand the Sharks front office in line with the average NHL team. And he needed to assure Hasso they'll pull the plug and go back to a "Doug hires his kids" model of hockey ops staffing if they don't see results within a couple of years.

We will never win with Hasso in charge.

Well God forbid Becher is actually working now! That guy has been mooching money off this organization for so long sitting on his lounge chair eating cheetos and tweeting random sharks tidbits like he's the media coordinator.

 

[jMoneyBrah]

Pretty pathetic that Hasso is worth 10+ billion but apparently Becher needed to put together a full fledged pitch just to convince him to expand the Sharks front office in line with the average NHL team. And he needed to assure Hasso they'll pull the plug and go back to a "Doug hires his kids" model of hockey ops staffing if they don't see results within a couple of years.

We will never win with Hasso in charge.

Personally I like that Hasso isn’t the type of owner that is meddling and micro-managing every decision; nor is he so aloof as to have no idea what is going on with the org.

Having an exit strategy when pitching the owner to expand the budget doesn’t necessarily mean the exit strategy entails reverting to the previous state. Also, being able to demonstrate contingency plans when asking to spend more money is, like, table stakes in the business world.

I don’t know where the Hasso hate really comes from. To be clear, I have no great love for him, mostly because I don’t know anything other than SAP, billionaire, likes hockey, owns Sharks, Sharks have never been held back by his purse strings since he’s taken full ownership of the team, and he showed up for the Pajamas recruiting pitch.

IMO it’s not Hasso’s job to develop org charts, spending initiatives, or keep the front office up to date with the trends of the league. His job is to bring the bankroll and let the full time staff run the organization.

If I had one complaint it would be the “we’ll never do a burn it to the ground rebuild” sentiment. While I personally disagree, and think that should be on the table for a team in the Sharks position; functionally, for this season, they’re there anyways.

 

[tahoesharksfan]

Personally I like that Hasso isn’t the type of owner that is meddling and micro-managing every decision; nor is he so aloof as to have no idea what is going on with the org.

I just wish he'd wake up to the idea that the org could do much better than Becher...

 

[Sharkz4Fun]

Personally I like that Hasso isn’t the type of owner that is meddling and micro-managing every decision; nor is he so aloof as to have no idea what is going on with the org.

Having an exit strategy when pitching the owner to expand the budget doesn’t necessarily mean the exit strategy entails reverting to the previous state. Also, being able to demonstrate contingency plans when asking to spend more money is, like, table stakes in the business world.

I don’t know where the Hasso hate really comes from. To be clear, I have no great love for him, mostly because I don’t know anything other than SAP, billionaire, likes hockey, owns Sharks, Sharks have never been held back by his purse strings since he’s taken full ownership of the team, and he showed up for the Pajamas recruiting pitch.

IMO it’s not Hasso’s job to develop org charts, spending initiatives, or keep the front office up to date with the trends of the league. His job is to bring the bankroll and let the full time staff run the organization.

If I had one complaint it would be the “we’ll never do a burn it to the ground rebuild” sentiment. While I personally disagree, and think that should be on the table for a team in the Sharks position; functionally, for this season, they’re there anyways.

Too much hands off is bad though, which is what happened when DW was in charge (and isn't just a Sharks exclusive problem obviously). Hands off can work when you have the right people in place, but a hands off approach with the wrong people is worse than an aggressive owner.

He's not well liked but Jacobs is a great owner. So is Leonsis. Both are very involved but not too involved and are far more worried about having the right people in place themselves vs. finding someone who they trust who then puts the people in place (Hasso). But of course someone like Dundon is probably not what you want either.

However long the rebuild takes I don't think there's even talks of Grier being fired for at least another 6-7 years.

 

[Mafoofoo]

If Hasso truly wants to win why not go all out in areas where there is no salary cap? Like front office/development/training staff and facilities.

Is there any rule preventing a team from having a massive training and development team? Or from having say a large in house data metric group?

 

[one2gamble]

If Hasso truly wants to win why not go all out in areas where there is no salary cap? Like front office/development/training staff and facilities.

Is there any rule preventing a team from having a massive training and development team? Or from having say a large in house data metric group?

I dont think the previous admin was able to articulate why that was valuable.

 

[coooldude]

This was a really compelling read. Most sportswriting on the internet these days makes me want to skim--this was the complete opposite. Such great work by Corey. Sad that he's not still covering the Sharks.

I paid for the SJHN+ year just to read it!

 

[LadyStanley]

I dont think the previous admin was able to articulate why that was valuable.

Hasso is not unwilling to spend $$. But a business approach of rationale and justifications is not unreasonable.

(Having fun with double negatives)

 

[Sheng Peng]

I paid for the SJHN+ year just to read it!

Thank you! Hope you like everything else behind the paywall!

 

[Hangemhigh]

Goes and voluntarily watches this team live. Now that's a dedicated owner.

He has tickets he can't sell. Just using them himself.

 

[Jargon]

Pretty pathetic that Hasso is worth 10+ billion but apparently Becher needed to put together a full fledged pitch just to convince him to expand the Sharks front office in line with the average NHL team. And he needed to assure Hasso they'll pull the plug and go back to a "Doug hires his kids" model of hockey ops staffing if they don't see results within a couple of years.

We will never win with Hasso in charge.

This feels like a needlessly aggressive Hodge-pre-life-changing-near-death experience take.

It just sounds like part of their pitch was we want to have a bigger team than Doug did and Hasso said, okay, tell me why (not unreasonable since, other than the cup, we were a highly successful team for many years) and they said, okay, and presented the plan.

It all seems very reasonable to me.

 

[Hodge]

This feels like a needlessly aggressive Hodge-pre-life-changing-near-death experience take.

It just sounds like part of their pitch was we want to have a bigger team than Doug did and Hasso said, okay, tell me why (not unreasonable since, other than the cup, we were a highly successful team for many years) and they said, okay, and presented the plan.

It all seems very reasonable to me.

How much could it possibly cost to hire ~15 front office staffers? I would guess considerably less money than Hasso is paying Radim Simek to play in the AHL this season. Why does that require a full blown pitch and a contingency plan when every other franchise except the truly dysfunctional ones that shouldn't exist like Arizona have a bigger front office than ours? We're not talking about building a new practice facility or renovating SAP Center here.

If Hasso was truly content (until the Grier hire) with the team's performance and management going back to when he took over as majority owner, I reiterate that we will never win a Cup under this guy. We have not been a legitimate Cup contender since 2011, the disaster contracts DW handed out to a core group that won nothing and were entering their 30s were glaringly bad decisions at the time and, most importantly from Hasso's perspective, attendance has plummeted at the Tank over the past decade dating back to well before our collapse in the standings. There were playoff games that didn't sell out during the Hasso regime and that's because everybody except ownership and management knew the Thornton/Marleau era had run its course and it was time to start over.

 

[coooldude]

How much could it possibly cost to hire ~15 front office staffers? I would guess considerably less money than Hasso is paying Radim Simek to play in the AHL this season. Why does that require a full blown pitch and a contingency plan when every other franchise except the truly dysfunctional ones that shouldn't exist like Arizona have a bigger front office than ours? We're not talking about building a new practice facility or renovating SAP Center here.

Any good exec will make the team build a plan. For all we knew, he was 100% on board with it right away, but he wanted them to detail it out. You don't just tell your team "money is no object, do whatever you want." You create accountability.

I don't know if Hasso is an amazing owner, but he's quite clearly not a terrible owner. It was not universally known and believed that the Sharks were not true contenders from 2011 onward, especially given how much playoff success we had from 2012-19. From an owner and fan perspective, it was one of the most successful franchises and was well respected.

Re-litigating a decade and criticizing an owner as incompetent and unable to win because one article said he made his management team build a budget seems like an unnecessary reaction.

 

[Hodge]

Any good exec will make the team build a plan. For all we knew, he was 100% on board with it right away, but he wanted them to detail it out. You don't just tell your team "money is no object, do whatever you want." You create accountability.

I don't know if Hasso is an amazing owner, but he's quite clearly not a terrible owner. It was not universally known and believed that the Sharks were not true contenders from 2011 onward, especially given how much playoff success we had from 2012-19. From an owner and fan perspective, it was one of the most successful franchises and was well respected.

Re-litigating a decade and criticizing an owner as incompetent and unable to win because one article said he made his management team build a budget seems like an unnecessary reaction.

It's not about one article, it's a pattern of behavior. I think we got an inside look at Hasso de facto running the team when DW was sick then stepped down (reports of him flying to SJ to close the Hertl deal, etc.) and it was an unmitigated disaster. They fired their head coach on July 1st in an unprecedented and embarrassing move and didn't hire a GM until the literal week of the entry draft. Throw in the Hertl extension and I really can't imagine how that 6 month period could have been handled any worse. You can put all of that on bumbling Joe Will if you want but Hasso deserves to be held accountable IMO.

 

[coooldude]

It's not about one article, it's a pattern of behavior. I think we got an inside look at Hasso de facto running the team when DW was sick then stepped down (reports of him flying to SJ to close the Hertl deal, etc.) and it was an unmitigated disaster. They fired their head coach on July 1st in an unprecedented and embarrassing move and didn't hire a GM until the literal week of the entry draft. Throw in the Hertl extension and I really can't imagine how that 6 month period could have been handled any worse. You can put all of that on bumbling Joe Will if you want but Hasso deserves to be held accountable IMO.

I'm with you on the mismanagement of the DW step down and the Hertl contract and those are, to me, clear mistakes that we paid for with a two year delay on the rebuild.

I just don't think that the budget/plan example is the right one to criticize him for and I don't think those mistakes mean he's a bad owner, just not clearly an exceptional one.

He's letting Grier basically tear it down. Maybe not to the studs like CHI, but pretty close. That's what we need right now.

 

[Jargon]

I'm with you on the mismanagement of the DW step down and the Hertl contract and those are, to me, clear mistakes that we paid for with a two year delay on the rebuild.

I just don't think that the budget/plan example is the right one to criticize him for and I don't think those mistakes mean he's a bad owner, just not clearly an exceptional one.

He's letting Grier basically tear it down. Maybe not to the studs like CHI, but pretty close. That's what we need right now.

Right, I think he’s a businessman who loves hockey and listens to the people he hires. The fact is, mistakes are made in every industry by the most talented leaders. I understand why Hasso trusted DW, even maybe when he shouldn’t have, and I appreciate that he seems to have allowed Grier to come in with an entirely different plan. He seems like a guy who trusts the people he hires — I, personally, really appreciate that.

As you said, re-litigating past mistakes and judging the owner of all people feels needlessly reactive (@Hodge, that’s to you, friend). I think the bigger thing is seeing that mistakes were made and allowing a new leader the freedom to try a new tactic. Hasso clearly did that with Grier (who you like, Hodge) and I appreciate that.

He’s clearly not a super savvy hockey ops guy, but “the Sharks will never win with Hasso” is “Will Smith only gets 2nd assists”-silly.

 

[The Nemesis]

Right, I think he’s a businessman who loves hockey and listens to the people he hires. The fact is, mistakes are made in every industry by the most talented leaders. I understand why Hasso trusted DW, even maybe when he shouldn’t have, and I appreciate that he seems to have allowed Grier to come in with an entirely different plan. He seems like a guy who trusts the people he hires — I, personally, really appreciate that.

As you said, re-litigating past mistakes and judging the owner of all people feels needlessly reactive (@Hodge, that’s to you, friend). I think the bigger thing is seeing that mistakes were made and allowing a new leader the freedom to try a new tactic. Hasso clearly did that with Grier (who you like, Hodge) and I appreciate that.

He’s clearly not a super savvy hockey ops guy, but “the Sharks will never win with Hasso” is “Will Smith only gets 2nd assists”-silly.

That is silly. Will Smith gets secondary goals too.