Recchi serious about ownership of Blazers

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Mark Recchi will play at least one more NHL season, his 21st, and has hinted that it will be his last.
However, the Boston Bruins forward can't — he just can't! — bring himself to say that this is it. For sure. Forever.
Ask him if this is it and he'll say that this season will “probably” be it.
Ask him one more time and you get a laugh and “I'm pretty certain this time.”
But ask him about his other hockey team, the WHL's Kamloops Blazers, and he doesn't hedge his bets at all.
“We want to see progress. We believe this is a big year for everybody,” says Recchi, who is one of the team's five owners. “This is a big year for a lot of our young players. This is a big year for our organization to start getting that winning feeling. We want that every year.
“Look at Vancouver, Kelowna, Calgary . . . they're successful like Kamloops used to be and was for a long time. You find a way to be successful every year.”
When he thinks of the fact that this team — his team! — hasn't won a playoff series since 1999 and has, in fact, gone 5-36 in nine playoff series since then, Recchi stares bullets and spits: “That's not right!”
Recchi is the only one of the ownership quintet — the others are majority owner Tom Gaglardi and NHL players Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla and Darry Sydor — who is from Kamloops.
Spend some time with Recchi and it doesn't take long to realize what this franchise means to him and how badly the lack of success — the Blazers have been swept from two first-round playoff series since this group took over — cuts him to the bone.
“It means everything. The Kamloops Blazers are everything to us,” he said. “They helped me get to where I am and, obviously, being born and raised here . . . it's a big deal.
“Tom has connections here. Shane and Darryl married girls from here. . . . The Blazers propelled us to bigger and better things.”
The time has come, then, for Recchi to see some improvement. He says he is tired of watching games on his laptop . . .
“(Sydor) and I talk basically every game,” Recchi says, a rueful grin making its way across his face. “We're watching and texting . . . we're pissed off . . . we're happy . . .
“I'm telling you . . . we're watching the computer . . . I swear
the computer almost ended up in the pool a few times. It's hard to watch on the computer. I have to figure out how to plug it into the TV.”
Which, considering recent history, may not be good for the health of the TV.
It goes without saying that Recchi has just about seen enough. But he feels that there are better days ahead, primarily because he is convinced that the franchise is in good hands with general manager Craig Bonner, who is into the second year of a five-year deal.
“It started when we hired Craig,” Recchi says. “His identity is coming out and his experience is coming out, from being on winning teams and championship teams. We really like the direction the team is going.
“We're getting a lot more character. We're adding people who want to be successful, who want to win, who want to be Kamloops Blazers and make this city proud again. That's very important to all of us.
“We want people who want to make the city proud and do the right things.”
Recchi says that for the most part it's a matter of the ownership standing back and letting Bonner and Matt Recchi, Mark's brother and the team's director of player personnel, do their jobs.
“They keep us informed. They always update us on what's going on, what they're doing,” Mark says. “They don't ask our opinions but they know they've got carte blanche to do the right things.
“At the same time, we're in touch with them . . . whatever they need, they know the ownership group is there. If Craig thinks they need it, it's not a problem.”
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So, if this is the final season of Mark Recchi's playing career, what happens next season?
He is adamant about one thing — he has no interest, absolutely none, in coaching. But he wants to stay in the game and he wants to be actively involved with his and Kamloops’ hockey team.
“My role won't change but I'm going to be here a lot more,” says Recchi, who owns a home in Sun Rivers. “What I would like to do is get in a couple of weekends each month, whether it's here or on the road. I think it's important that our ownership group . . . that we get our group here and we're in the stands and we help out.”
Whether Recchi, 41, retires now or after the 2010-11 season, his career almost certainly will end before those of Doan, who will be 33 on Oct. 10, Iginla, 32, and Sydor, 37. Recchi, then, will be the first of the ex-Blazers to be in a position to dedicate more time to the franchise.
“When all of us are able to do it, it's going to be great,” Recchi says.
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When Recchi and the others purchased the Blazers from the society that had owned the team since the early 1980s, Gaglardi said that they would be hiring a president to live in the community and oversee things. That never happened, and Gaglardi, who lives in the Lower Mainland, is the franchise's president and governor.
So . . . what about Recchi, once he is done with the NHL, as the franchise's president?
“Yeah, I enjoy that part so we'll see how it goes,” he acknowledges. “That's the part I enjoy. I don't really want to coach; that doesn't really intrigue me that much.
“But I like the process of building a team and how you do it right. That really intrigues me a lot. I can see myself . . . I want to be part of it.”
He can see himself speaking to various groups and, as he put it, “being part of the community.”
“Almost,” he adds, “like a figurehead around the team.”
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In the meantime, he is looking for Bonner, Matt Recchi, head coach Barry Smith and his staff to show the way.
The Blazers, Recchi says, have to be a whole lot more like the defending WHL-champion Kelowna Rockets. They were 13-0 against the Blazers, including 4-0 in a first-round playoff series.
“Obviously they're very successful and we need to get to there,” Recchi says. “You're not going to win every year but you're in there and every year going into the start of the season we want people to say 'Kamloops is going to be there, Kamloops is going to be tough. They're going to be hard to play against.'
“That's important. We haven't been very hard to play against.”
A competitive team, Recchi believes, will provide value for the entertainment dollar and will sell tickets.
“Absolutely,” Recchi says. “That hasn't changed. We understand the economy is tougher these days but if you put the right kind of team on the ice the people are going to come out.
“They are going to be excited to watch it and proud to watch it.”
That, in a nutshell, is what Recchi wants to see here.
“I want to be around the arena,” he says. “I want to hear from people. That's my passion.
“We're here to make this right.”