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NEW JERSEY DEVILS MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 9, 2015

Josh Harris

JOSH HARRIS: Well, first of all, welcome to opening night. It's been a big week, starting with obviously the honoring of Marty Brodeur and the retiring of his number, and we're going to build a statue, as we mentioned. It's going to be very exciting when it happens. But it's great to have him in the building, and now opening night.
Obviously a big, big off‑season. Lots of change. You know, the commencement of the Ray Shero era in hockey for the Devils with, you know, 100 percent support of ownership, and ending of Lou's era, although we wish him very well in Toronto. So lots of change, lots of new faces, lots of investment in infrastructure, coaches, development people, scouts, and players.
You know, the players, the roster has gotten materially younger, faster. It's a different roster, and a saying of goodbye to some old faces and bringing in some new faces, all of which we're very excited about, and our goal is kind of consistent, which is to build an elite team here in New Jersey that wins consistently and ultimately brings a fourth Cup back to New Jersey. So we intend to do that.
You know, Ray and the organization he's building I think is going to enable that over time.
On the business side, a lot of investment in the fan experience, you know, some investment in the building where we've put some capital in as you can see just walking around the building relative to some of the lounge areas, and so a lot of investment in fan experience. I just spent the last hours with the staff. They're geared up to really blow the doors off tonight for the fans and make it a great experience.
That's where we are. And I'll just open it up for whatever questions you all might have.

Q. Are you going to reach out to Lou in regards to when Marty's ceremony is going to take place to see if he wants to attend? How is that situation?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, I mean, the situation and relationship with Lou is great. There was no animosity on either side. In fact, you know, Lou made a decision to‑‑ a very human decision to go a different direction with his career, and we supported that, and he supported us.
For sure Lou will be invited to that ceremony, and it'll be up to him whether he attends.

Q. Do you have any projections as far as what ticket sales look like?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, so we're very high up. I think we're fourth in the NHL in terms of new‑‑ fifth. We're fifth in the NHL in terms of new tickets sold, which I think is a testament to what the team is doing in terms of all kinds of creative things relative to fan choice, in terms of which games they want to go to, and also all the new things that are going on in the building relative to the new food, the new experience pretty much across the board, all of the new bar areas, everything that's going on here.
Yeah, ticket sales are actually increasing, and that's going well.

Q. Can you put a number on that?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, I don't think we really do that. You know, I sort of defer to my business team, but we haven't typically released those, but we're the fifth‑‑ we're fifth in the NHL in terms of new tickets sold.

Q. Did you lose much?
SCOTT O’NEIL (CEO, PRUDENTIAL CENTER AND NEW JERSEY DEVILS: We renewed at about 90 percent second year in a row and last year we were seventh in new, so you have a progression of things getting better, but we have a ways to go to be selling this place out every night.
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, I mean, so look, where are we in that? Like we're not‑‑ we're sort of building off of a low base, and the reality is that two years ago when we got here, you know, the roof was leaking and the banks were on the doorstep of the company, and so the new management‑‑ the whole management has changed.
You know, Hugh and Scott lead pretty much a big change over the management team, so we started very low. I think there's a lot of potential to move up, but we're making significant strides off a relatively low base.

Q. What are your expectations for the team? How long are you looking at to get back in the Playoffs?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, so the way we think about it is this: We want to make progress against the goal that I laid out earlier, which is to build the organization kind of on and off the ice, to kind of enable a winner, and so it starts with kind of bringing in the right coaching talent and the right player development talent and the right scouts to get the right players, and eventually it ends up kind of on the ice with the right players. It's really hard‑‑ I'm not trying to be evasive. It's really hard to put a time frame on it. But we're in a hurry. I'm not a patient person. I've never been a patient person, and you know, I hate to lose.
You know, when we lose, I don't have a good time. And so I want to win, but I'm not willing to sacrifice our ultimate goal, which is to be an elite team by making short‑term decisions on or off the ice that will inhibit our ability to consistently complete for the Stanley Cup.

Q. Does that mean you're not going to‑‑ I mean, I guess the best way to say it is there might be a period of slow growth, and it's like you want to succeed but it's not going to be right away?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, I mean, it's very‑‑ again, there's a lot of parity in hockey and it's very hard to predict kind of our on‑the‑ice success this year specifically for me. Like the people have really come together‑‑ there's a lot of new faces that's all come together in practice, but I would say that we're focused much more‑‑ we're focused on player development and performance on the ice and building our infrastructure over time and less on kind of how many wins we have in the first bit of this season. That's what you go through realistically when you make a lot of change. But the reality is the team that Ray inherited was an aging team that hadn't made the Playoffs for three straight years.

Q. The perception at least on the outside of the 76ers in recent years have been that the team was tanking to get high draft picks. Would it bother you if the same perception was of this team?
JOSH HARRIS: Yeah, I don't think that's a fair characterization of what's going on at the Sixers in terms of what we're doing to rebuild the team, but I think the two situations are very different. I think hockey is very different than basketball. I think the ability of one player to make a huge difference in basketball is larger than it is in hockey, and I think hockey is very much of a team game, and I think also the parity of the teams in the league are much closer, and so therefore I know people might want to draw that analogy, but I don't think it's really an appropriate analogy necessarily. I do think that the goals are the same, which is, you know, as I've been mentioning, to be an elite team that's consistently competing for the championship and ultimately win championships. But I think that trying to analogize those two situations is difficult.

Q. The problems on the business side that you were talking about, just strictly wins and losses, was there any ‑‑ was moving from the Meadowlands here any factor in that problem?
JOSH HARRIS: You know, honestly it's really hard‑‑ we bought the team several years ago, and it was just‑‑ it was what you find when you buy a lot of businesses that are avoiding a difficult financial situation, which is a lot of decisions weren't being made that were long‑term decisions but rather short‑term decisions in terms of deferring capital and cash outlay. So that leads to difficult situations in terms of quality.
And so we've been slowly but surely changing all that, and a lot of that's in the past, so we shouldn't dwell on it. But by and large, it's hard to comment like really specifically on what was going on before we got here.

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