SUNRISE, Fla. — His spacious condo is off Las Olas Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
On Saturday, Peter Luukko watched his Florida Panthers at the morning skate and then returned home.
“Sat at the pool and made phone calls,” said the former Flyers president who is now executive chairman of the Panthers.
He still hits the ice at 7:30 a.m. five days a week and skates with employees, just as he did all those years at the Spectrum and Wells Fargo Center.
“Unfortunately, I’m old enough to be everybody’s father,” Luukko said.
On Monday night, Luukko returns to Philadelphia for the first time representing another hockey team, one that's on the way up the charts and dismembered the Flyers, 7-1, Saturday in South Florida.
“It’s going to be great (coming back),” Luukko said. “It will be fun to get back there and see everybody. Not only guys I was close to, like Homer [Paul Holmgren] and Ed Snider, but also the ice crew. We grew up together from the Spectrum. The ushers. My kids ran around the building since they were born.”
NHL
Luukko has a large task at hand as he tries to rekindle the hockey spirit in Sunrise after years of mismanagement and neglect from former owners after the Panthers moved from Miami.
Yet there’s a genuine buzz around a club that has a lot of young legs. Florida’s youthful defense with Aaron Ekblad, Alex Petrovic, Dylan Olsen, Dmitry Kulikov and Steven Kampfer is a perfect model for the Flyers. Every one of them is in their 20s except Ekblad, who's 19.
Look at those Panthers and realize this is where the Flyers’ blue line is headed in the coming years with all their prospects.
Combined with someone like Jaromir Jagr around to teach them the ropes, this is how you build a team that has long suffered and is turning the corner.
“It’s an opportunity to build something almost from scratch frankly,” Luukko said. “It’s like anything else and you see it in Philadelphia. When you have a single owner, not ownership by committee, that is when you have an opportunity to win.
“You look at Rocky Wirtz, Jeremy Jacobs and the leaders in Detroit. That is how you build a franchise, but you also must have a financial commitment.”
Jagr’s influence can’t be understated from on-ice to marketing to general awareness.
“It’s real important,” Luukko said. “His work ethic is second to none. The impact he has on all the players, but just watching the young guys kinda follow him around to see what he is doing.
“His routine. His focus. It takes a while to become an NHL player and have that commitment and know you can win.”
Vincent Viola owns the team. Along with partner Doug Cifu, they have given Luukko and general manager Dale Tallon carte blanche to do whatever it takes to put the Panthers back on the map.
“We've got to build a winning tradition here,” Luukko said. “I think we will be just fine. You remember back at the Miami Arena when they beat the Flyers on the way to the (Cup) Final? It was crazy down here.
“When you make the playoffs once in 15 years, that’s hard. How would you like being in Philly and missing the playoffs 14 of 15 years? It’s difficult. We've got to give it its chance. Ever since the Jagr deal at the trading deadline, we were a buyer and not a seller.”
Hosting last summer's NHL draft, acquiring Jagr and Ekblad and winning the 2014-15 Calder Trophy has all generated marketing momentum. Luukko says the team has a strong season ticket base to build on. He called it “acceptable” — 9,000, which is up from 4,000 last year.
That’s a dramatic improvement in one summer, but then again, look at all those companies under the former Comcast-Spectacor umbrella Luukko and Snider built into an empire in Philadelphia and you sense success will come to South Florida.
“People are seeing the commitment,” Luukko said. “We’re not here for fun. We’re here to make it.”