Michigan → Owners of Wings, Hurricanes Feud

Owners of Wings, Hurricanes Feud....for the record:

Tue Jun 4, 2:46 PM ET
By JIM IRWIN, Associated Press Writer

This Stanley Cup rivalry between the Detroit Red Wings and Carolina Hurricanes has been described as icy, bitter and fierce — and that's just between the owners.

Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch and Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos Jr., are both the sons of immigrants, self-made millionaires and major players in the revival of both downtown Detroit and their moribund NHL franchises.

But almost from the moment Detroit beat Colorado 7-0 on Friday night in Game 7 of their Western Conference championship series, media attention turned to an Ilitch-Karmanos relationship that has been bumpy at least since the mid-1990s.

Karmanos, who owned the NHL franchise when it was the Hartford Whalers, in 1996 toyed with the idea of moving it from Connecticut to The Palace of Auburn Hills, 30 miles north of the Red Wings' rink. The league dissuaded him, and Karmanos moved the Whalers to North Carolina in 1997.

A year later, the Hurricanes wooed Red Wings restricted free agent Sergei Fedorov with a six-year $38 million offer. Ilitch matched it, and because of accelerated bonuses in the deal, had to pay out $28 million the first year.

Now, with the two teams vying for the Stanley Cup, the owners are playing down their personal feud.

Ilitch, the Little Caesars pizza founder who also used his dough to buy the Detroit Tigers and the landmark Fox Theatre, "prefers to keep the focus on the game and the players and coaches in it," Red Wings spokesman John Hahn said.

Karmanos, owner of software producer Compuware Corp., has said he's been a Red Wings fan ever since he was a kid growing up in Detroit. He said he and Ilitch are not enemies, but rather, they share common histories.

"There isn't any animosity between us," Karmanos said. "When I'm here, if I have any pizza, it will be Little Caesar's.

"We have one important thing in common. We've both spent millions on youth hockey and turned an area that wasn't developing many NHL players into an area that is developing more than its share."

Ilitch built an extensive youth hockey operation in southeast Michigan before Karmanos developed one of his own. One of Karmanos' top teams, the Detroit Junior Wings — whose head coaches included the Hurricanes' current coach, Paul Maurice — played three seasons at Ilitch-managed Joe Louis Arena until they were evicted in 1995.

Besides their hockey players, thousands of Ilitch's and Karmanos' other workers toil behind counters and in cubicles — and must deal with conflicting alliances.

The 2,400 employees at Compuware's corporate headquarters in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills may benefit from their boss' affinity for the Red Wings.

"Certainly people have (car) flags and there's a lot of loyalty to the Wings," company spokesman Doug Kuiper said.

The situation is a little less clear in Raleigh, N.C., home of both the Hurricanes and at least nine Little Caesars outlets.

Several of the Raleigh restaurants in the Ilitch pizza empire operate within Kmart stores, which ordered extra jerseys, car flags, license plate frames and other Hurricanes merchandise when Carolina reached the finals, said Dave Karraker, a spokesman for the retailer.

But Kmart isn't selling or promoting Hurricanes goods within the confines of the Little Caesars, he said.

**This little bit of neat research was posted as reply to me and I thought credit was due to luvfishin......thanks
»Luvfishin

»story.news.yahoo.com/new ··· y&ncid=5

Need to add a quick footnote to all: The baggage between the two owners has been greatly played down......as of late.....and mostly by Karmonos.......who also founded The Karmonos Cancer Institute in Metro Detroit........

The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is named in memory of the Detroit native who married her high school sweetheart, Peter Karmanos, raised three sons, and helped launch a major international business. She died at 46, after an eight-year battle with cancer.

Barbara Ann met Peter at Henry Ford High School in Detroit. The couple were married in January 1965. “She was a prototype for women of the ’90s,” explains Peter. Devoted to her family and an outstanding athlete, Barbara Ann also pitched in when Peter cofounded Compuware, the international computer systems firm, in 1973.

"Barbara Ann was a bright, energetic person with a poor immune system," says Karmanos. As a child she contracted polio and scarlet fever, but recovered from both. She was diagnosed with a nonaggressive form of breast cancer in January 1981 but, according to Peter, "never gave an inch to cancer. She never complained and never felt sorry for her situation. She felt the way to defeat cancer was to continue her life as she lived it before becoming sick."

Barbara Ann Karmanos died January 10, 1989. On July 20, 1995, in memory of his late wife, Peter Karmanos made a gift of $15 million to the integrated cancer system formed by Michigan Cancer Foundation, the Meyer L. Prentis Comprehensive Cancer Center of Metropolitan Detroit and the cancer programs of The Detroit Medical Center and Wayne State University. Today, the system is known as the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. It is one of the largest cancer centers in the United States and the only major center named for a woman.

"Barbara Ann would be very pleased about the gift," says Peter. "She strongly believed in the work done by the people who now bear her name. She would have been somewhat shy about the naming, but privately, she would have been very pleased."

»www.karmanos.org/