Paul Reinhart was drafted twelfth overall by the Atlanta Flames in the 1979 NHL entry draft and went on to play 648 games in his professional hockey career, notching 133 goals and adding 426 assists for 559 points, making him one of the highest-scoring defensemen in NHL history.
But some of the best advice Reinhart says he ever got during his 11 years in the NHL was from his agent Alan Eagleson, just before the team was sold in 1980 to a group of Calgary businessmen.
“He told me in no uncertain terms to get myself to Calgary and learn as much as I could about the oil and gas business from the likes of Doc Seaman and Harley Hotchkiss, who bought the team and made their livelihood from the resource sector,” Reinhart recalls.
Reinhart’s earliest friendships in Calgary outside the rink were with brokers from Macquarie Securities (formerly Yorkton Securities) — Allan Frame, Michael Prew and Ron Brimacombe — who helped stickhandle the young athlete’s investments into the right junior mining stocks.
“My wife and I had some successes, and all of a sudden we had a significant pool of capital that we used to continue to invest,” Reinhart recalls. “The very real reality is that while you’re playing the game you’ve got a hell of a cash flow business yourself, because you make a significant amount of money in a short time.”
Through his ties with the brokerage community Reinhart went on to meet mining entrepreneurs like John Toffan and Ron Netolitzky and got in early on some of their success stories, among them Stikine Resources, which held a 50% stake in Eskay Creek, one of the most significant discoveries in Canada since the Hemlo gold deposits were found in Ontario. Reinhart invested in Stikine Resources while the stock was trading for a few dollars a share and watched it peak at $70.
“I used to stop in at their offices in the morning while I was still playing hockey and spend a little time with them learning about geology,” he says. “We’d talk geology — certainly not enough to become a geologist —but to understand a little more about what goes on in the industry.”
The discovery of Eskay Creek, north of Stewart, B.C., helped focus attention on the province’s underexplored and often underestimated potential. While still playing in the NHL, Reinhart was introduced to Jim Stypula — a businessman and financier living in Cranbrook, B.C. — and became a founding director of Kokanee Explorations.
At the same time, Reinhart introduced many of his teammates to the world of flow-through financing, and together they participated in the company’s early stage financing. Kokanee spent considerable funds in the East Kootenays pursuing Sullivan-like deposits.
Reinhart also got to know mining legend Robert Friedland when he put some of his money into Fairbanks Gold shares and its Fort Knox deposit in Alaska. Friedland later sold Fairbanks Gold to Amax Gold for US$152 million in 1992. Fort Knox is currently owned by Kinross Gold (K-T, KGN-N).
After a series of back injuries forced Reinhart to retire from the NHL in 1990, Friedland invited the hockey star to work for him in Vancouver. Reinhart accepted and worked in investor relations from 1991–1992. “I’d like to think I learned things from Robert,” Reinhart says. “He’s a tough guy not to learn things from.”
In 1996 Reinhart teamed up with Stypula, Frame and Prew a second time and joined with Doc Seaman, then-owner of the Calgary Flames, and Bob Hindson to launch Far West Mining. The company’s flagship project became the Santo Domingo copper-iron-gold deposit in Chile, 800 km north of Santiago. Last year Capstone Mining (CS-T) purchased Far West Mining for $715 million.
Reinhart was also an officer of Chapleau Resources, now Magellan Minerals (MNW-V). And early this year he agreed to help raise the profile of Bearing Resources (BRZ-V) and manage the company’s corporate communications. Joining Bearing gives Reinhart an opportunity to team up once again with Geoff Chater, Bearing’s president and chief executive, whom he met working with Friedland in the early 1990s.
When asked what some of the similarities are between making it in the NHL and in the mining business Reinhart says it all boils down to teamwork. “Playing a team sport like hockey has taught me the value of associating with the right team,” he says. “Just like in the NHL, if you have a good team, you have a very good chance of succeeding.”
“Maybe it is the risk and reward dynamics of this industry that appeals to athletes,” Reinhart adds. “Succeeding in the athletic world is certainly a difficult proposition, similar to the resource industry. But with success comes significant reward. Both require persistence, discipline and teamwork.”
Reinhart isn’t the first NHLer to carve out a second career in the mining industry, and he will not be the last. Serge “the Senator” Savard — who played defense for 17 seasons with the Montreal Canadiens, won eight Stanley Cups and played an important role in Team Canada’s epic victory over the Soviets in 1972 — is MDN’s (MDN-T) chairman of the board.
Darryl Sittler, who played centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings, and set an NHL record in 1976 for the most points scored in one game (six goals and four assists against the Boston Bruins), is on the board of Wallbridge Mining (WM-T), Royal Nickel (RNX-T), Frontline Gold (FGC-V) and Miocene Metals (MII-V), a Wallbridge spinoff.
Rick Vaive, who played right wing for the Buffalo Sabres, Chicago Blackhawks, Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks, has put in time on various boards including Pan Terra Industries (PNT-V), Giyani Gold (WDG-V) and Forsys Metals (FSY-T), while Denis Potvin, who played defense for the New York Islanders after being drafted number one overall in June 1973, and was captain of the four-time Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders from 1980–1983, is on the boards of Touchdown Resources (TDW-V) and Eloro Resources (ELO-V).
Left-winger Ken Berry, who played in the minors and the majors for the Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers, as well as for the Canadian Olympic team in 1980 and 1988, is chief executive and director of Northern Vertex (NEE-V) and Theia Resources (THH-V), as well as chairman and director of Kootenay Gold (KTN-V). Berry started off as an investment advisor while still playing professional hockey in the 1980s, and since then has served a major role in over $325 million in financings for the public companies he has founded. “It was a challenge to stay in the NHL, so I was driven to explore all opportunities,” he says. Berry’s maternal grandfather was a coal miner in Saskatchewan and his father a placer miner in B.C.
Right-winger Rejean Houle of the Montreal Canadiens is a board member at Richmont Mines (RIC-T, RIC-N, RIC-X) and left-winger Geoff Courtnall, who played for the Boston Bruins, Edmonton Oilers, Washington Capitals, St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks, is promoting Lupaka Gold (LPK-T).
“I think what happens is t
hat athletes like the excitement of professional sports and they like the element of risk in the mining industry,” Courtnall says. “I think they are sort of attracted to it.”
And building a great hockey team is similar to building a great mining company, adds the speedy winger, who scored 367 goals and added 432 assists for 799 points during his NHL career, but retired in 1999–2000 after developing post-concussion syndrome.
“When I played in Edmonton with Wayne Gretzky we won the cup in 1988, and he was always in the dressing room talking to guys and saying that we were only as good as our weakest link, and it takes twenty guys with different skills to win. Business is the same thing.”
It was actually through a fishing derby that Courtnall made contacts in the mining industry. In the early 1990s when Courtnall was playing for the Vancouver Canucks, he organized an annual derby in the Queen Charlotte Islands to raise money for charity.
His idea was that well-heeled brokers and mining executives might jump at the chance to spend a few days fishing with professional athletes and Hollywood celebrities, and the proceeds would be donated to Canuck Place, a hospice for families with terminally ill children.
Courtnall ran the charity event from 1993–1995 and tells how mining executives, financiers and brokers from Yorkton Securities, a Vancouver brokerage that was becoming a major force in the world of international mining finance, were among the event’s biggest donors.
“A couple of the guys at Yorkton were donating so much money,” he recalls. “They told me that if I got an account they’d help me trade stocks. They were always talking about different deals.”
The early 1990s were an exciting period in Canadian mining — a time when Robert Friedland’s Diamond Fields Resources was looking for gemstones in Voisey’s Bay and stumbled upon a vast nickel deposit instead. Friedland later sold off Voisey’s Bay to Inco for $3 billion after fuelling a bidding war.
“Diamond Fields was on fire and it was a really exciting place to be,” Courtnall says of the industry. “I started to really learn about the investment game through those guys and got involved in putting my own money into deals and raising money from others for investment ideas that were different — from mining to the internet to biotech.”
Fast forward to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver when Courtnall became aware of the Crucero property, 100 km north of Lake Titicaca in Peru’s Carabaya Province. “We looked at drill core and samples, some of which contained visible gold, and we sat down and negotiated an option deal over three days,” he says. Courtnall then helped form Lupaka Gold around the Crucero property as its principal asset.
Lupaka Gold closed its $20 million initial public offering (IPO) in June 2011. In January 2012 the company acquired 100% of Crucero.
Highlights from assay results released in February included 1.36 grams gold per tonne over 67 metres, including 2.64 grams gold over 27 metres and 3.83 grams gold over 11 metres and 10 metres grading 1.23 grams gold.
“It’s always exciting to see the drill results come out, and we’re still only working on one exploration area,” Courtnall says. “Our last 43-101 was 1.2 million oz. gold, and we will be issuing an updated resource in March 2012. There are lots of great things happening in the company.”
Courtnall chalks up some of his interest in mining to his competitive nature. “There’s that competitive spirit of wanting to be part of building a company,” he explains. “It’s like building a team from the ground up and being involved in bringing great people to a great story and helping move a company forward.”
And in mining as in hockey, it’s all about taking risks. “I’ve always said that I believe guys who are hockey players — or any athlete for that matter — have had to take a lot of risks in life,” he continues. “A lot of people I know gave up their education, a lot of guys had to leave home at an early age and follow their dreams. And if they became successful it’s because they took huge risks in life to succeed. It’s something that is part of the journey, I guess.”
Keep your stick on the ice
Darryl Sittler retired from the NHL in 1985 after 15 seasons and was speaking at a breakfast event for the Young Presidents’ Organization in Toronto when he was approached by Risto Laamanen, a businessman from Sudbury.
Laamanen wanted to get advice for his son about the best route to the NHL: whether to play in the Ontario Hockey League, or whether to accept a hockey scholarship at a college in the U.S.
Sittler’s own son Ryan had previously made the same decision — he chose the hockey scholarship — and the two men struck up a friendship that would last until Laamanen’s death in 2009.
After their initial meeting, Laamanen invited Sittler and his son on a fishing trip in northern Ontario, and it was at that time Sittler learned about the claims Laamanen and his partners had staked near Sudbury and their private company, Wallbridge Mining.
Sittler was intrigued and joined the company, helping the founders raise money, stake more claims and eventually take it public in the first IPO following the Bre-X Minerals scandal.
As a partner at Wallbridge, Sittler wanted to learn everything he could about the industry and began attending the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conferences in Toronto. He also took a director’s course from the Canadian Institute of Directors.
“When you’re well known, there are lots of people who have deals or opportunities who would love you to be a partner,” he says in a telephone interview from his winter home in Florida. “People like to use your name and say that you’re involved in their company — it helps gives them some credibility or exposure.”
But at the same time, he says, being a director means having to do one’s due diligence, and make sure there aren’t any red flags about a company. “If I’m going to take on the responsibility of being a director and represent shareholders, and if there are red flags that I see, it’s important to bring them to the forefront,” he says. “My view is if you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to ask questions.”
Like many others who played in the NHL, Sittler emphasizes the importance of teamwork. “In every successful organization I believe leadership begins at the top of the organization, but everybody that is part of the program is as important as the next person,” he says. “I try to get out and do as much team building as I can.”
Of course patience is also key, both in sports and business, Sittler says. “It takes time, there are no guarantees.”
“When people come up to me and say that I’m so fortunate to have been an NHL player I stop and wonder, ‘but how did I get there?’” he continues. “It was the little things I understood from a young age, like if I did day-in and day-out practicing to work on the skills I didn’t have I would be prepared . . . you’re training all season or all through the summer, you’re competing with someone else to get that position, or get m
ore ice time. It’s no different than in a business, when you do the same things day-in and day-out and grow yourself as a person, and as a member of the team.”
Sittler adds that like hockey, being successful in business can mean having to adjust to things that might not be ideal. “You have to be patient in hockey and sometimes you might not get the ice time you think you’re entitled to, or the coach doesn’t play you in the right position or the position you think you’re entitled to, and you have to adjust accordingly. You have to be patient and believe what you bought into and stick with it.”
It’s not much different in mining. “There is a lot of work behind the scenes, raising money, the feasibility studies — it requires a lot of patience. And sometimes you can have great assets but they’re not reflected in your stock price.”
Keep your head up
Right-winger and revered penalty killer Rejean Houle of the Montreal Canadiens, who played in 700 NHL games and helped win five Stanley Cups with the Habs, got his first exposure to the mining industry as a young boy growing up in Rouyn-Noranda, a historic mining district in northern Quebec. His father was a driller for Quemont Mines and he remembers the long shifts his father spent underground, and how he would come home with hands aching from holding the drill for 10 hours at a stretch.
“It was a hard job,” Houle recalls. “At that time they didn’t have the technology they do today and my father had a small drill that he had to hold all the time . . . but we were six at home — four girls and two boys — we were a big family, and we were pretty poor, so he tried to work as much overtime as he could. Sometimes he’d work seven days a week. The money for miners was not there like it is today.”
Despite the long, exhausting shifts underground, Houle’s father would make every effort to watch his son’s hockey practices and games. “Sometimes he would work the night shift from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m., and if I had a game at 6 a.m. he would give me a lift and see me play,” Houle remembers. “The first pair of skates I had were second hand because he couldn’t afford new ones. But you get used to skate with what you have.”
Houle was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in the first round, first overall, in the 1969 NHL Amateur Draft and made the NHL team in 1970–1971. Nicknamed “Peanut” because he was “small and couldn’t stay standing still during coaching,” Houle retired from hockey in 1983 and worked as an executive at Molson Breweries before joining the board at Richmont Mines, where he remains “more nervous going underground than going on the ice.”
Houle says he learned at a young age that there’s nothing easy in life and that you have to work through problems and challenges that come up — whether on the ice or on Bay Street. He says it’s that wealth of life experience he brings to his board duties at Richmont.
“You have to work for it and sometimes you have to go through aggravations and get through it,” he says. “This was what I was doing. Sometimes you’re not always playing with the guys you want to play with, but you have to adjust yourself to a different situation . . . in mining you need to be a go-getter too, in terms of exploration and raising money.”
And at the end of the day, in the NHL as in mining, you can’t let defeat get you down.
“If you lose one or two games you can’t be down on yourself, you have to say, ‘Look, we missed that one, but there’s another game ahead,’” he says.
“It might be the same in mining. You may invest some money into exploration and it doesn’t go the right way, but you can’t give up. And if you want to add ounces you have to think outside the box. That’s easy to say, but tough to do.”
Be the first to comment on "From jocks to rocks"