Name: ‘It’s just wrong’: Former Sabres owner Larry Quinn on PSE’s firings
Brand: theathletic.com
SKU: theathletic-com-10
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

‘It’s just wrong’: Former Sabres owner Larry Quinn on PSE’s firings

preview

Apr 17, 2020BUFFALO, N.Y. – It’s been nine years since Larry Quinn was minority owner of the Sabres. He’s made a point not to talk about the organization he sold to Terry and Kim Pegula. As recently as February, when the Sabres celebrated 2000s Night and welcomed Quinn back to KeyBank Center, he declined to answer a question about improvements he’d make to the arena he developed, saying it wasn’t his place.But Quinn can stay silent no longer. The mass firings this week by Pegula Sports and Entertainment were unbearable, unfathomable and unacceptable to him.“As you’ve noticed, I have not made a single comment about the Sabres since we left. I have practiced that religiously,” Quinn told The Athletic by phone Friday. “But this is – I just don’t understand. It’s just wrong.”PSE Tuesday. Among those terminated were longtime employees John Sinclair, the vice president of tickets and service; Chris Bandura, the vice president of communications; and Jennifer Van Rysdam, the vice president of live events.“If I had to name all the people that worked for us, the three I admired most would be those three,” said Quinn, who was part of B. Thomas Golisano’s ownership group from 2003 to 2011.The termination of Sinclair hurt Quinn the most. The head of tickets has been with the Sabres since 1988, making Sinclair one of the few employees who worked for all four of Buffalo’s ownership groups. Quinn worked alongside him when Quinn was president of the Sabres in the 1990s and again when Quinn helped Golisano purchase the team.“The way they’ve been treated, you don’t take a 32-year employee and say goodbye and give him two weeks of health insurance – not in the middle of a pandemic,” Quinn said. “You just don’t do that. I just don’t get it.“There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is. I know there’s challenges in the business, and I understand that people from time to time have to make economic choices. But you treat the people well that have worked for you for a long time if you’ve got to part ways, and I just don’t get it.”Pegula Sports and Entertainment has been examining cost-cutting measures since before the arrival of the coronavirus. Some of the firings were set to happen during the offseason, but the pause created by COVID-19 moved up the timeline.While PSE says the moves were necessary from a financial standpoint, the optics of billionaires letting people go during such a tumultuous time are not good. That’s especially true in light of the Pegulas’ earlier decisions to and ignore the sports-wide trend of owners .“Treat them right – and this is not right,” Quinn said. “I for the life of me don’t understand. It’s just staggering to me.”Quinn has wondered from whom are the Pegulas getting advice. The owners spend more than half of the year in Florida to save money on taxes, so they rely on an inner circle in Buffalo to help them make choices. The remaining executive vice presidents include Ron Raccuia and Mark Preisler.“This just doesn’t make any sense,” Quinn said of the shrinking list of VPs.He praised Van Rysdam’s work in attracting big concerts, including the surge in artists who can fill New Era Field such as the Rolling Stones, Guns N’ Roses and Billy Joel. He noted how much Sabres players have loved working with Bandura since 2005. Quinn again commended Sinclair, noting his willingness to work seven days a week to make sure ticket sales run smoothly at every event.The Sabres have experienced a notable drop in ticket sales in recent years. Sinclair and his staff made the overdue move of revamping the arena pricing model this spring, yet the number of season-ticket holders is expected to drop substantially. Of course, Sinclair had the unenviable task of trying to sell tickets for a team with a nine-year playoff drought, the longest in the , while battling the dainty prices on StubHub.“I don’t understand why you let go of a guy that knows every single season-ticket holder when you’re going to have to get them all back,” Quinn said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”Watching everything unfold was just too much for the former Sabres owner, who still lives in Buffalo. He sees what the Sabres, Bills and their employees mean to the community, and he couldn’t sit idly by without saying something.“I don’t want this to be an attack on the Pegulas,” Quinn said. “I’m trying to defend really, really good people that I think have just been wronged.”(Top photo of Quinn (2nd from left) at a pregame ceremony in February: Bill Wippert/NHLI via Getty Images)

Apr 17, 2020BUFFALO, N.Y. – It’s been nine years since Larry Quinn was minority owner of the Sabres. He’s made a point not to talk about the organization he sold to Terry and Kim Pegula. As recently as February, when the Sabres celebrated 2000s Night and welcomed Quinn back to KeyBank Center, he declined to answer a question about improvements he’d make to the arena he developed, saying it wasn’t his place.But Quinn can stay silent no longer. The mass firings this week by Pegula Sports and Entertainment were unbearable, unfathomable and unacceptable to him.“As you’ve noticed, I have not...

public

John Vogl

Get every sports story that matters. Download The Athletic app: https://linktr.ee/TheAthletic

‘It’s just wrong’: Former Sabres owner Larry Quinn on PSE’s firings

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS