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It's a fascinating dynamic of our civilization

that we gravitate to the players like Joe Sakic.

Who's your favorite player? - Joe Sakic.

Why? - The captain.

People recognize excellence, and they ignite.

Joe Sakic!

He was one of those guys that you couldn't wait

- till he gets back on the ice. Two on one led by Sakic.

In he goes. Scores! Sakic!

The speed, the quickness, the soft hands, the eyes.

Seeing plays get set up.

It was like ballet.

Sakic beats one man, beats another guy.

Here he comes, right in, a shot-- He scores!

The most valuable player is Joe Sakic.

Everything arose from him touching that puck.

Sakic fakes it, takes it. Scores! Joe Sakic!

Shot and save. Rebound. Off the post--

Scores!

Joe Sakic was the Colorado Avalanche.

The Hart Trophy goes to Joe Sakic.

The face of our franchise for the past two decades.

I'm thrilled to announce that Joe Sakic has agreed to become

the executive vice president of hockey operations

for the Colorado Avalanche.

Three seconds, two seconds.

One second.

It's over!

The Colorado Avalanche are Stanley Cup champions.

Joe's our captain.

Well, that's all terrific. Of course, it almost didn't happen.

It was a good day. It was a beautiful summer.

I was looking towards vacation and my phone rang.

And it was Mark Kiszla.

And, uh, Kiz said...

Charlie, how's it going?

"So, have you heard?"

The New York Rangers just offered Joe Sakic $21 million

with 15 million up front.

What do you got to say about that?

There's silence on the phone for a few seconds.

Charlie says, "I don't know anything about that."

This is a crisis because there are a lot of things you can do in business.

But one thing you can't make up, is money in the bank.

We did not have that money in the bank.

I said, "Well, I guarantee you it's happening."

The New York Rangers are offering him a three-year contract,

a total package of $21 million.

But most of the money is being paid up front

in the form of a $15 million signing bonus.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't even know how to metabolize it.

Wednesday, August 13th at 6 p.m.

That's the Avs' deadline.

So, now it was, "Okay, Charlie, what tricks you got?

How you gonna raise this money in seven days?"

In the movie business,

we have a little trick when we're developing stories.

And that's the ticking clock.

Well, here it was.

Seven days, and the clock is ticking.

Sports circles across North America

are still buzzing today

about that gargantuan free agent offer sheet the Rangers have made

to Colorado Avalanche captain, Joe Sakic.

A reported three year, $21-million contract

that features a $15-million signing bonus, all of it up front.

Somebody had looked at our balance sheet.

They had done their homework.

The Avalanche lost 8 million last year,

and according to several different reports,

the Avalanche will be unable to match.

I've covered sports in Colorado for nearly 40 years.

I never had any other story involve a movie.

This was an entertainment world connection

imposing itself on the sports world.

Can the Avs come up with that kind of cash that quickly?

My job was to find the money.

A city that loves its hockey,

and its team's best player,

holds its collective breath.

So, how did you know about the offer sheet?

Hmm.

I don't know, after all these years, I can reveal my source,

but I can tell you one story.

If you wanna ask-- Or you wanna know how familiar I am

with the fact that the Nuggets,

and then the Avalanche,

were never rolling in dough

compared to their peers in the league.

I believe it was 1989.

Two gentlemen, Peter Bynoe and Bertram Lee,

put together a proposal to buy the Nuggets.

Bynoe and Lee were smart.

They recruited a brilliant sports executive

to be part of their ownership group.

They gave this brilliant sports executive a piece of the team,

and he was going to be president of the Denver Nuggets.

His name is Dave Checketts.

Here we go.

That sale did not go through,

but Dave Checketts had very intricate knowledge

of the history of the tenants of the building

the Nuggets and the Avalanche played.

I mean, it's pretty obvious that--

why I knew what I knew...

...but Dave Checketts was the mastermind of this deal.

Many owners have said to me, "You know, that really changed everything."

And none of them would have done this.

Um, but Charlie and I were friends before any of this happened.

I met Dave Checketts at the NBA Board of Governors meeting

in 1992.

I was the newly installed governor of the Denver Nuggets.

The team was an embarrassment. It was in the cellar.

They were losing a lot of money.

Charlie and I have a lot in common.

We both have lived in a world where franchises are losing money

or deep in debt.

My first job in sports had been at the Utah Jazz,

a club that, in the 1980s, was bankrupt.

There were days I could not cash my paycheck

until Adrian Dantley, our best player, deposited his.

Yeah. Hair on fire is the vernacular.

Well, I mean, fortunately for me,

by the time that this story starts with Charlie Lyons,

I was running kind of a different show in New York.

Dave Checketts' career continued to skyrocket

and in very short order, went to work for the Knicks

and then oversaw the entire Madison Square Garden empire

that included the Knicks and the Rangers.

I was immediately like, "I want to get to know this guy.

I think the stuff that's coming out of his mouth is really smart."

Under what conditions, for instance,

do you take and trade away young players to go for it?

Dave was kind of my mentor.

It's one of the most unique things about sports,

is that you're partners with all of these other franchise owners,

and yet, you want to beat them all the time, too.

You want-- You want to win when they come in,

and you want to be on equal footing

when it comes to the quality of your arena.

Because McNichols Arena was just the oldest,

most rundown building in the league,

the Nuggets were held up as the poster child of franchises

that were bleeding money and were in trouble.

McNichols Arena, I would call it-- affectionately call it a nice dump.

It's a very simple business in a certain respect.

It's very much like Broadway.

You have your arena, and that generates a big portion of your revenue.

And McNichols was the oldest facility in the league.

It was rundown. And you didn't have very many luxury suites.

So the result is,

it didn't have any ability to generate any additional revenue.

And it wasn't a great place for the fans.

You gotta ask?

Jeepers! Look at the crowds!

But you start doing the math.

One sports team in a small market

was not enough to generate the returns to build a new state-of-the-art arena.

So it was clear we needed a second team.

There is no other way to do it.

They were looking around for a team.

Sakic scores!

Lately, ice hockey has become one of the hottest sports going.

By this time, Gary Bettman had gone over

to the National Hockey League as commissioner.

We're getting the word out there that we've got a great sport.

Everything associated with it is fun, it's exciting, it's hip,

and the people are thinking about us.

And I got a call from a gentleman

at the Walt Disney Company, and he said,

"Look, I'm thinking that the Quebec Nordiques are gonna be sold."

I was at The Denver Post as a part-time guy,

and just happened to get a scoop dropped on my lap

that the owners of the Denver Nuggets were going to make an offer

for the Quebec Nordiques.

Quebec City is the smallest of the small-market teams

in the 26-team NHL.

Quebec was in financial distress.

The projections for the '95-'96 season

are that we're going to lose between 12 and 14 million.

I'm never gonna forget the day Marcel looked at me

and there were tears in his eyes.

He said, "You know, I-- I-I got to-- I got to sell

and I want to sell to you."

As he was saying he had to sell,

he went into a monologue about Sakic...

Joe Sakic with a shot-- He scores!

...as if to say, you're this close to winning a championship.

The Quebec Nordiques are moving to Denver.

The COMSAT Corporation,

which already owns the Denver Nuggets, has purchased the Nordiques franchise.

They will begin play in Denver next season.

Uh, first of all, I want to thank you all for waiting patiently.

With me on my left is Charlie Lyons,

president of the COMSAT Entertainment Group

and who will be the governor of the franchise.

And we're here to answer your questions.

Let's face it, Charlie didn't know much about hockey

other than there was frozen water.

Uh, the answer is, uh--

Let's be clear, I knew nothing about hockey, truthfully.

I think the press reports in Denver have been accurate.

Pierre will be executive vice president general manager of the club.

It was always a very close relationship between Pierre Lacroix and Charlie Lyons.

Pierre was a larger-than-life brain.

Let's start there.

Pierre comes in, he knows everything about hockey.

He's a hockey lifer.

And he said, "You know what?

We're gonna win.

But the only way we're gonna win is if we're a family."

I've been involved with professional sports

for over 30 years.

The one thing that I'm a big believer, and I'm 100% convinced,

is that what wins in professional sports is chemistry.

To have that aspiration to be the champion of the world

means the only way you're gonna get there is if you get there together.

The support of this ownership group has been incredible.

He had the same philosophy in mind.

Always wanted to support us

in order to offer the people of Colorado the best product available.

Shot-- Score!

Joe Sakic!

That's a perfect partner.

And then on top of it, he moved across the street,

so we became best friends.

He became godfather to my kids.

What happens next? - I mean, we kick ass is what happens.

Mellanby, trying to clear. Didn't get it out. Sakic held it in.

Still held in.

Uwe Krupp, shot-- Score!

The Colorado Avalanche have won the Stanley Cup!

I can't fucking believe this!

We won, baby!

- We won the fucking Cup! We won the Cup!

Charlie!

The Denver community absolutely embraced the Avalanche from day one,

and the Avalanche fell in love with the Denver community.

Yelling and screaming, holding up the newspapers,

holding up anything that they can.

Some of the pom poms.

And they're going to celebrate. Ed?

Our president, Charlie, has a special presentation

to make to the whole team.

I'll tell you what I wanna do for you guys,

'cause you're the best people in professional sports

and it's an honor to be part of your family.

Uh, Pierre and I got together and figured what you need is a vacation.

So we're gonna send you away-- We'll send you away for a week,

and you're gonna stay in a real nice spot--

real nice resort-- for seven days.

So, what the heck!

Riot! Riot!

When Joe Sakic held up that cup in front of the crowd,

they went nuts.

You, the people of Denver, the state of Colorado,

you have the best sports fans in America.

- Thank you very much.

What is a star?

It's intangible.

The truth is that

if you actually spend a lot of time thinking about that success

you're gonna fall on your face because it's fleeting, it comes and goes.

So what it did for me

is it made me want to work harder at everything else,

and it just increased the pressure to be better at everything you do.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

I'd like to welcome all of you to the White House,

especially Charlie Lyons, the President of Ascent Entertainment

and, of course, the 1996 Stanley Cup winners, the Colorado Avalanche.

We have a championship.

We now have two teams.

We now have the pieces to build a state-of-the-art venue.

My first stop was the great Mayor Wellington Webb's office.

Mayor Webb was beloved.

Great big city leader.

He was interested in Denver being one of the greatest cities in the world.

It's always been my belief that if you're going to be a big city,

uh, that you have to have all the sports in order to compete.

It's kind of that ego thing for cities.

By them winning and bringing the Stanley Cup to Denver,

it gave us what the kids call swag.

I said, "Mayor Webb, we just won the Cup.

You got your championship, man. Come on. Let's go."

Every sports team wants a new arena or a new stadium.

We have no illusions about what it takes to be successful.

The question's always, who pays?

That's it.

Is this good for the taxpayer, and not just good for the owners?

And so he wasn't just going to roll over for a professional sports team.

You had to make the case.

There's nothing wrong with this market.

It's probably the best sports market in the country.

And he pushed back. He was tough.

The people need to decide whether they want to invest in a stadium.

They were having trouble putting a deal together for a new arena.

A lot of trouble.

So much trouble that people like me thought,

"Well, maybe this won't ever happen."

When the negotiations started breaking down,

trying to close the deal on the Pepsi Center...

I hinted that maybe we would move the team to Singapore

or someplace local.

I had a news conference.

I passed a vending machine.

And I just happened to see a Coca-Cola in there

and asked my press person, Andrew Hudson,

did he have change for the vending machine?

He said, "No, you're not gonna do what I think you're gonna do."

And I said, "Yeah, I think I'm gonna absolutely do

what you think I'm not gonna do."

He got up with a Coke can and said, "That's what I think of that."

What fun is a negotiation if you agree?

You might as well beat each other up for a while.

But under all of that charade,

many of us didn't realize how far out on a ledge Charlie was.

During the course of that season,

Charlie had a big project going

that was not hockey.

All the while, while this is happening

for the teams in the building,

I was doing my level best to build a media company.

We had a subsidiary, Beacon Communications,

that was an independent film company,

and we came up with a strategy where we like to own our films.

Charlie Lyons was going to become a movie mogul.

My guest today is a former carpenter

who's made more blockbuster movies than any actor in history.

I guess maybe it was you're seeing a pattern here.

He starred in seven of the top 20 moneymaking films of all time.

It's just we weren't afraid to try and get the Nordiques.

Please welcome Harrison Ford!

We weren't afraid to approach Harrison at the height of his career

as an independent company,

even though we had never done anything large before.

He was going to have Harrison Ford in this movie,

and it must have an airplane in it, and, man, it was going to be cool.

We thought Harrison was a really safe bet

to commit to his salary in the absence of having the film green lit,

so you're committed to pay him whether you make the movie or not,

which is a really tricky thing in the business.

He loved the script and decided that this was something he wanted to do,

and Sony was excited about it.

A Columbia Pictures release.

Perfect.

It was all on a gimbal on the Sony back lot.

We knew we were going to be releasing a major film,

but we had no idea what was going to happen.

If ever there was a recipe for a lot of trouble

it's where we were sitting at that moment.

We were losing money.

If we don't get a building, it's really hard to make the two teams work.

So, look, let's not kid ourselves.

There was a lot riding on all of this.

As the leader of this chaos, I had to be certain that we didn't blow it

because that was a bet-the-ranch move

to make a movie that big and everybody's watching.

To this day, I can't tell you what was opening night

of the Avalanche season...

or what night the Avalanche got eliminated.

But Charlie would remind me.

"July 25th."

On July 25th...

"July 25th."

President of the United States.

"The movie opens July 25th."

Harrison Ford.

Air Force One. Opens everywhere, July 25th.

Around that same time frame,

we had an unfolding situation with free agency.

Contract negotiations will begin next week with captain, Joe Sakic.

We're now past July 1.

There are some in the NHL who feel that with Patrick Roy

making $4 million plus a season and Forsberg now striking it rich,

the Avalanche may not be prepared to dig so deep into their pockets again.

It was a potential gathering storm,

but there was so much confidence in our organization about Pierre.

Pierre was the best at this.

We will take all the time we need in order to make the right decision.

I remember calling Sakic, and he was sort of hinting

that he wasn't real thrilled with the negotiations with the Avalanche.

And it was all happening at the same time. You have a major movie coming out,

where you're going to live or die...

Harrison Ford brings Air Force One in for a landing in theaters this Friday.

How do you think the film is going to do?

Well, you never know.

But this film is as well-equipped to do well as any film I've ever made.

Everybody's become accustomed with seeing a movie loss of $150 million.

It's possible to do.

We're steaming towards that opening with uncertainty.

Air Force One took off at the box office this weekend.

The Harrison Ford film brought in more than $37 million over the weekend.

Thankfully, people loved the film.

This is a president as a hero.

It's a great film, fun adventure.

It was a combination where you had a great director.

A great writer named Andrew Marlowe.

A perfect performance.

Marc and Army delivered a great film. On time. On budget.

We had the number one movie in America.

So, life's good. The movie's performing well,

and I read the sports section every day.

I'd pick up and I go, "Oh, poor Dave, that sucks.

He lost Mark Messier."

When you are building a team, imagine a wheel.

I think it's easy to get a rim.

I think it's easy to get spokes.

It's really hard to get the hub.

Messier was the hub of the wheel.

Life after Mark Messier began today for the New York Rangers.

Vancouver? That shocked everybody.

They had a big void at center.

- An explosive hole. - Mm-hmm.

You know where this goes.

In professional sports,

you are 100% dependent upon the performance of human beings.

I mean, it really is

the ultimate human performance show.

Mark Messier was literally the savior in New York.

The messiah!

And rightfully so.

Greatest leader I've ever covered in any sport,

and nobody's in second place.

But this was a time when, I mean,

you're delusional if you don't know that the player was in decline.

Our hockey experts felt like

giving him more than one year guaranteed would be a mistake.

And Mark left and went to Vancouver,

and that set off for us a torrent of negative reaction,

and there wasn't much I could do about it.

Yeah, I think when you're put on the back page of the New York Post

and the headline reads "Dumb & Dumber,"

that's about as bad as it gets.

The only thing I said about that was, "Well, I'm dumb, so you get to be dumber."

Do you realize what you've done?

Hey!

I couldn't be in New York as long as I was

and be overly sensitive to the press.

But I did see that.

And I think they,

as an organization, have a plan in place.

The in-case-of-Mark-leaving plan, and they have to find a way to move forward.

This is the kind of off-season--

The kind of summer

that would make most general managers just pull their hair out.

But Neil-- Neil still has retained almost all of his hair.

Congratulations, Neil.

That was a joke, by the way.

I just knew that we needed to do something to plug that giant hole left by Messier.

And that's when I started to focus on Joe Sakic,

who was a Group 2 free agent.

Oh yeah, he was Group 2.

And then I thought, what the hell does that mean?

What exactly was a Group 2 free agent?

Go ahead.

Paragraph ten,

subsection two of the six-year collective bargaining agreement

was Group 2 free agency.

A Group 2 free agent was in a position

where they could be open to receiving a free agent offer sheet.

Except for the fact that his former team has

168 hours in which they can match it and keep him.

No one ever did this,

because if the team that held the rights to the player decided not to match,

they received your next five first-round draft picks.

To go to five straight drafts and have your fans say,

"We don't have a first-round pick this year, and we didn't win the Stanley Cup?"

That's punitive, and I'm sure

a lot of owners thought there's no chance anybody's gonna do this.

So, I thought about that.

But in the Sakic situation,

we still had a really good team.

We had one of the best defensemen in the league in Brian Leetch.

We had one of the best goaltenders in the game in Mike Richter,

we had the best hockey player that ever played the game.

And plugging Joe Sakic into the middle of that team

meant that we were Cup contenders, I felt, for the next few years,

and I think Neil agreed with that.

And what people think on the outside,

is that Neil Smith decided, "You know what, I'll sign Joe Sakic.

Why don't I sign Joe Sakic?" You know?

That's not how it works.

Dave Checketts, the president of Madison Square Garden,

walked into my office and said, "Well, we're gonna do it.

We're gonna sign Sakic to an offer sheet."

And I said to him, "Dave, this never works in the NHL. Never."

The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup,

and they lost $8 million,

and they couldn't get their new arena financed.

It was very attractive to me,

just thinking of the situation that once we launched this offer sheet,

they were gonna have seven days and I really liked our chances

by front-loading it

and making it so they had to write a check for 15 million bucks in seven days.

The way we'll do it was to heavily front-load an offer

so that Colorado couldn't possibly come up with that much money

to match the offer, and they'd have to take the draft picks.

I know it sounds terrible, but it's within the rules.

I had the right to do that.

It wasn't that I was doing something illegal.

Sound is speeding.

Okay. Can we get a slate in?

Pardon me, sir.

Joe Sakic interview, take one. You got that, Tim?

My agent gave me a call

and asked me if I'd be interested in listening to

the New York Ranger proposal,

if that would be a destination that I'd go to.

And, you know, obviously, New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden.

- I always loved playing in New York. Sakic on a breakaway.

- And he scores! Nice play.

It was an exciting possibility to think about you getting an opportunity

to play with Wayne Gretzky.

Is there someone you're dreaming of being,

or you're thinking about playing in the NHL?

I still remember those days.

We always jumped the fence to get into the school,

and my friend was always Mark Messier and I was Wayne Gretzky.

So, yeah, I had a lot of interest.

My agent flew to New York, met with them quietly,

didn't want anybody to know what was going on.

And it was really secretive.

A couple hours later, he called me and gave me the offer.

That'd be pretty stupid not to sign something like that.

I said, "We have a deal."

The offer sheet came in at the last minute of business

on the night of the first day.

- Was that intentional? - Yes.

I've always done free agent offer sheets

when no one thinks it's about to happen.

I like the shock value of saying, "Guess what?"

So we've been ambushed and we've got seven days.

At that time, Charlie and Pierre Lacroix were neighbors.

I wandered across the cul-de-sac,

and Pierre has that look on his face, like, "What tricks you got, big guy?"

He wasn't in full control, it was in Charlie Lyons' control.

Here I was, sitting with arguably one of the greatest general managers

in the game, and he had no bullets. He didn't have a gun.

There was nowhere for him to go.

He was not a happy man.

And he was upset and shocked.

Everybody thought there should be some courtesy,

but it's war.

It's the National Hockey League.

It's a culture where you fight for every last inch.

So now it was "Okay, Charlie, what tricks you got?

How you gonna raise this money in seven days?"

You better not mess this up.

Well, I just remember thinking, "Oh, boy, you know, I'm gonna have a long week."

I've described it as an insane asylum.

We've retained a psychiatrist to help us deal with the media.

It's like a nuclear bomb going off.

Neil Smith has given Sakic a...

$15 million signing bonus. All of it up front.

This is like winning the lottery.

We'll see. We're very surprised about it. But I am very excited about it.

There was calls coming in from everywhere.

There were double agents that were going back to Dave, back to me.

Trying to find stories as soon as they could.

I don't know where that story came from!

Fans were saying, "Please-- Please, Joe. Stay."

Pierre Lacroix offered these thoughts.

I want to ask our fans to trust us. We'll make the right decision.

By the looks of it, the Avalanche will be unable to match.

I got to be honest with you, I wasn't too worried about the economics.

One minute you think they're gonna match,

the next minute you think they're not gonna match.

Everybody telling me, "Don't match. Don't match. Don't match."

"Hurt the league. Hurt the league." "Five draft picks. Five draft picks."

- Five... - Five...

- ...future... - ...first-round draft picks.

The media criticized me for putting more attention

on Air Force One than I was on July 1st free agency.

They were right. What if we can't pull this off?

He is going to New York.

Aviation is a great proxy for life.

When things go wrong when you're flying an airplane,

there's a tendency to want to immediately address it.

But that's the worst thing you can do.

History is replete

in situations where that first move makes a situation worse.

So, one of the things they drill into you when an emergency has occurred,

take your hands, don't touch anything.

Sit on 'em. Catch your breath for a moment.

Let your head clear.

It's okay to go screw up, but you got to learn from it.

For me, Dikembe Mutombo was the mistake.

The Nuggets were the first eighth-place team to beat a first-place team.

That's when Dikembe became famous. And he must've been beloved in Denver.

It was a-- A miracle.

The Hawks swoop in and signed Dikembe Mutombo.

It was just a time for me to move on with my life.

Losing a gentleman of that class

that was that powerful a personality in the locker room,

that was that tremendous in the community, I was devastated.

You learn, unfortunately, sometimes the hard way.

You lose a star like Dikembe,

it sits there like a damn parrot on your shoulder,

screaming in your ear, "You dumbass, don't do this again."

The New York Rangers are trying to steal away your captain.

Charlie Lyons takes that right to heart.

This was not gonna happen with the Avalanche.

We're going to go into this like warriors.

The beauty of a hit movie is it's noisy.

The President of the United States of America,

Harrison Ford, ladies and gentlemen!

That was a very good movie.

So good, according to President Clinton,

he's already seen it twice.

This whole bringing this movie into it, it's a crazy story.

It's an amazing story.

I can tell you, I was writing a lot that

Avalanche fans, if they wanna keep their team together,

they better go out and buy Air Force One tickets every single day.

New York said, "Whatever you do, do not go see Air Force One."

"Boycott Air Force One," that was the headline.

Yes, they promoted our film.

- Air Force One sold out for 4:40? Yeah. It's sold out.

When you say don't go see Air Force One, think of why not?

"Maybe I should go look at it and see what it is."

Oh, yeah. Of course I saw that movie.

I thought my future might depend on it as well. I might have seen it twice.

Do you remember saying, "I plan to go see it,

so maybe I'm the dumbest one of all"?

No, but that sounds like something I would say.

- I hope he liked it. - I love the movie.

I did not see it.

The New York Rangers were very confident.

Dave Checketts bet me a steak dinner that the Rangers would get Joe Sakic,

and I went, "No. That's not gonna happen."

They'll find a way.

Look, it's really easy to draw a straight line, saying,

"The movie's doing well. Therefore they have the money."

It doesn't work that way.

Didn't they teach you that at Yale?

You can't go to your film company and say, "Hey, congratulations,

you don't have any money from the windfall you generated

to make future big movies,

because we're now going to pay a hockey player."

What it did is it increased our confidence about our ability to execute on a plan...

Cut the green wire.

Everybody could see these guys got a movie that just was the top movie in history.

That drives instant respect.

So, they pick up the phone.

Well, I remember the frantic phone calls.

I knew, for any plan to work here,

we had to settle the arena situation first.

If there was ever a time to stop the theatrics

on both our parts, between the city and Ascent, this is the moment.

We both have to represent our side.

But the mayor saw what was going on,

he saw that Denver was getting victimized by a mega operation in New York.

I never accepted that bullshit.

We're tough people, we don't back down from anybody.

Somebody putting some money up for us, that don't mean nothing.

- Bring 'em on! - And Wellington said,

"Yeah, this is the time. Let's bring it home.

Got to keep the captain, and let's get that Pepsi Center built.

That's a priority of mine."

Fans are real funny.

They say they support their team no matter what.

But the reality is, fans show up when teams win

and they don't show up when teams lose.

Neither one of us want an arena that's gonna be empty,

so maybe we do better, by the city taking less money up front,

providing the team to accumulate more dollars

so that they can make sure that they can purchase the players they need

to fill up those seats.

So, we said, "Let's use that analogy.

If the team is winning, the city will get more money,

and we didn't want to be the Boston Red Sox trading Babe Ruth."

We wanted to make sure Joe stayed here.

I had a lot of people on the streets ask me if I heard--

If I have any inkling on what's gonna happen,

and I-- Honestly, I had no idea.

The President may be alive,

but he may not be the president.

I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

I do recall making a lot of calls

and hearing stuff about things that are in progress.

The wheels are in play.

So, there were three great moving parts.

So the first step was the arena.

The second step was there was this wonderful partner in town

and great corporate presence in Liberty Media.

So I thought, "Maybe, what the heck, let's give them a buzz,

and see whether or not they're interested in buying

a small piece of the combination, the Pepsi Center and the two teams."

And then the biggie.

We had been staring at the end of the Fox broadcasting agreement.

So why not re-up it?

Fox is a great partner.

Let's keep the games on TV and maybe get a little up-front cash.

The idea of stabilizing the two teams

on the premium cable sports service in the world, that's a no-brainer.

- Good, then that settles it. - It doesn't settle it at all.

I had no idea if any of it was gonna work out.

The plan was sort of stirring around and also, it was being debated.

This is a military situation.

I'm the Secretary of Defense. Check your regs.

The media was saying, "What the heck is going on?"

Just tell me whether they match it or not.

"Are you keeping Joe? We really don't care about any of that other shit."

Will the Avs match the Rangers' offer?

Will Joe Sakic remain a Coloradan or become a New Yorker?

Today, nobody really knows.

On that fateful day,

everybody was kind of congregated in my office.

Be young, have fun, drink Pepsi.

And if you're Joe Sakic, figure out to do with your $21 million.

The Colorado Avalanche today matched the Rangers' offer.

Get off my plane!

- It worked. - Joe's back!

Denver wanted to hug Joe so badly.

This decision is great.

I was ready to go to New York, but I'm just happy everything worked out.

We promised our fans to be competitive.

He came over to the house and brought the check.

It's a great day. No question about that.

- There was no hard feelings. - In the end,

Joe Sakic turned out to be a false, post-Messier Messiah.

More than anything else,

I was just so disappointed we didn't get him.

The Avalanche have their captain and their captain has his windfall.

And everybody's bouncing from press conference to press conference.

It took three years of haggling

between Ascent and the city of Denver

to agree on terms to build the Pepsi Center.

Both the Avalanche and the Nuggets are gonna be here 25 years.

It's a great deal for the city, but it's a great deal for us.

I think it was a great breakthrough and now we don't back off of anybody.

Mr. President, welcome aboard, sir.

It's the movie that saved the Avalanche.

Liberty Two-Four is now Air Force One.

Did you leave something out, Charlie?

- Does that surprise you? - No.

- I'm sorry. - Oh, Charlie.

There was a lot going on.

You remember when you came to my trailer?

You and Army?

We do.

Yeah?

There's more.

More?

Yeah, let's watch the rest.

Release dates are really important

for theatrical motion pictures.

And there's this communication that goes on between the studios

as to who's claiming what,

who's gonna put their flag in the ground.

The movie opens July 25th.

If you looked at the movie calendars months ago,

that would have been the only movie to open on July 25th.

Now, there are reports that-- Wait, no, this is important--

There are reports that Warner Bros. will release Conspiracy Theory on that date.

Titanic may come out on that date.

Sony had asked my partner and I to go down and convince Harrison

that a date in November was their desired date

to release Air Force One.

I think they were of the view

that we would go down and inform him in a way that would make him happy...

...and I'll never forget going into his trailer after a long day

and he says, "What do you guys want?"

"The studio has suggested November," blah, blah, blah.

And he looks, he said, "That's all great.

I want to go in July, The Fugitive date. That's my date."

Say that again.

"That's all great, guys. We're going in July."

And so, being the strong-willed characters that we were,

we looked at you and said, "Okay."

- And did we come out in July? - Yes, we did.

How did we do against Titanic?

Well, that's the interesting thing.

You didn't stop there.

That upset you, didn't it? - No, it didn't upset me.

I-I thought it was bad business for everybody involved,

and so I said so.

You picked up the phone--

I spoke, myself, to the head of a studio. Yeah.

He gets on the phone, and the studio executive pleads his case.

Why would you want to compete with that

when you have a free ride if you wait until November?

- To which he said... -"Pick another date."

Which, in fact, they did.

Will his movie open on the same date?

No, but it has nothing to do with me.

- His movie is not ready. - You're good on the phone, aren't you?

His movie is not ready to be released.

The result is,

we ended up getting on that date and the rest is history.

Titanic moved to December

and Conspiracy Theory just nudged a couple of weeks,

but it was enough to make all three movies very successful.

A hell of a story, Charlie.

Well, I think everybody owes you an enormous debt of gratitude...

- Charlie. - But I'm afraid of that. Yes?

- I'm afraid of what you're gonna say here. - Yeah.

Yeah, so as one was slowly turning to poo,

- the other was rising from the ashes. - Yes. Yes.

- Or from the poo, as it were. - Like a zenith, yes.

- Yeah, like a zenith from the poo. - Yes.

- That's me. Yeah. - That's it. Yes.

- So, you saved everybody. - Again.

- And, you know, there was-- - Again. Again.

Yeah. It's true. Over and over again.

You're welcome, Charlie.

That wasn't so hard, right?

- I helped create chaos. - You did indeed.

This is much better than I thought it was gonna be.

It's a regular thriller, ain't it?

Here we are.

- Charlie, it's good to see you. - Good to see you, brother.

- So, you matched the offer. It's true.

I-- [chuckles] I walk into my office,

and leaning on the file cabinet is a package.

The package has my name.

Handwritten. Nothing official about it.

The Garden address and a P.O. box in Denver, Colorado.

I don't want to open this.

You got to get the security guys...

- We got to do a sweep. - ...get them up here. Yes.

Get 'em up here. Tell 'em they got to open this.

They got to figure out whether this is anything lethal.

And my security guy walks back into my office.

He's holding the picture so I can only see the back of it.

And he said, "Dave, it's a picture.

Everything's okay, but you're not gonna like it."

He hands it to me.

There it was, Nelson Rockefeller flipping the bird,

and I knew who it was from.

I'll tell you the truth, Charlie, I was never mad at you.

- I was mad we didn't get him.

And I walked into this room next to my office,

and there's one of those large commercial garbage cans.

- I smashed and broke it. - Oh, no!

And threw it in the garbage can.

- Don't you wish you had it today? - I wish I had it.

It would be worth a lot now.

Everybody says to themselves, "What would have happened if?"

If the Avalanche don't match,

Joe Sakic gets a hero's welcome to New York,

and I think the Rangers would have won at least one more Cup.

Do the Avalanche win the 2001 Stanley Cup?

I don't know.

I think they used this, and rightly so,

as an example of how crazy things could go

if you didn't have restrictions on the salaries.

The sun had set for the rascals

stringing it together with chicken wire.

Between the Waltons and the Kroenkes, I think Denver is in great hands.

I just couldn't be happier with the shape that they're in.

Joe retires, decides to come back

and learn the business from Pierre Lacroix as general manager.

The Cup is coming back to Colorado!

How about this team?

Joe Sakic is hockey in Colorado.

So, think of all I've done to help the Avalanche.

There should be a statue of me in front of the building, don't you think?

- I'm so proud of you. So proud of you. - 25 years later, I'm still here.

- They can't get rid of me yet. - That was the idea.

It's been remarkable.

We always try to maintain the same culture that Pierre brought.

And you own the town.

This is a great city, and they love the Avs, always have.

The culture that you've created in this town,

and the way you're beloved, we couldn't have been happier for you.

And that, when it came time for Pierre to hand the baton,

he handed it to you.

It was all about saving Sakic.

So all of this is about saving Sakic?

That's pretty much it.

Well, and the movie was kind of important, too.

- Yeah.

- Don't do that again. - Yeah.