Late Chicago Blackhawks Chairman Rocky Wirtz had planned for years for his son, Danny, to carry on the various family businesses without him. But when Rocky died from an illness on July 25, it felt no less jarring and devastating.
“We didn’t think it was life-threatening, but it turned into three or four days of a real tough battle for his life,” Danny Wirtz told the Tribune in an interview Friday to discuss his ascension to the head of the team’s organizational chart.
Danny had worked alongside Rocky since spring 2020 when the Hawks named him interim president and then CEO later that year. With Rocky’s death, Danny’s official title has been updated to chairman and CEO.
Danny, 46, didn’t want to discuss the exact nature of Rocky’s illness but did open up about the impact of those final days.
“One minute, we’re talking on the phone, rescheduling some things because he had some stomach issues, and fast forward and he’s passed,” he said. “It’s a traumatic experience when you’re dealing with something so sudden, almost like disbelief: ‘What just happened?’
“You say, ‘Oh, my gosh, a week ago, we were just chatting about something, and now he’s gone.'”
Danny said he’s grafetul several loved ones — including his daughters Hillary and Kendall, wife Marilyn and closes friends — “were all able to be there and be able to say our goodbyes, which is a terrible thing to have to do. But it does provide some closure and our chance to assure him that we’re going to be OK.”
Still, Danny was in a “state of shock.” But as heir to the Hawks franchise — as well as the Wirtz Corp., a company with holdings in real estate, banking and alcohol distribution — reality set in that grief had to be set aside temporarily.
“The next steps start to become very real,” he said.
Tom Bené, president and CEO of Breakthru Beverage Group, remembers getting a text from Danny that day: “I need to speak with you. Urgent.”
“I stepped out of the meeting, called him, and he shared the news with me. I was shocked,” Bené said.
“I must say (Danny) was unbelievable at compartmentalizing. We had our moment about Rocky. And then he also said, ‘Here’s what I need your help with (with Breakthru). And here’s who I’ve talked to already.’ “
Danny said work obligations helped take his mind off his father’s death while also allowing him to share memories with Rocky’s old friends, business associates and employees.
“It’s been actually very healing,” he said. “When people share their stories, their memories, their appreciation, share the impact that he made, whether (it’s) a personal friend, a family member or a (Hawks) fan, each one of those helps you a little bit get through each day.
“Nothing really takes away the pain, but it sure helped in those days to feel that love from so many people.”
Rocky presided over three Hawks Stanley Cup championship runs in 2010, 2013 and 2015, brought home games back to local TV and built a rabid following that boasted a 535-game sellout streak at the United Center.
Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs said in a statement to the Tribune that the Wirtz and Jacobs families have been mutual friends and mentors in business and sports “going all the way back to Arthur (Wirtz) and my father (Louis).”
Jacobs, chairman of the NHL Board of Governors and food service company Delaware North, added: “Rocky brought the Stanley Cup back to Chicago, and equally importantly, he prepared the next generation for leadership of the franchise. We mourn Rocky’s loss but are confident in knowing that Danny is a strong, capable and conscientious owner who will continue to do right by Chicago’s fans and this storied Original Six team.”
It speaks to Rocky’s impact on the NHL, Chicago sports and the hospitality industry, a heavy mantle Danny says he’s ready to take up.
Remembering Rocky
The Wirtzes hosted private and public memorials on Aug. 8 and 9, respectively, for Rocky, who was 70 when he died.
The private service at Fourth Presbyterian was attended by a who’s who of hockey, including NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.
“He was one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known in my life; a great ability to get along with people,” Bettman told the Tribune.
“Terrific, terrific sense of humor,” said White Sox and Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, a co-chair of the United Center Joint Venture with Rocky.
Danny said most of the tributes center on Rocky’s biting wit or his penchant for spinning a yarn.
“His wisdom came less in direct advice,” Danny said. “It was a lot of storytelling, a lot of lessons embedded in the stories and experiences he had.
“‘Your dad told some great stories about working on the family farm or his early days in the liquor business or what it was like working for his grandfather (Arthur).’ They were stories of business and family, but embedded in them were lessons of what to do and what not to do sometimes.”
Succession plan
It’s Danny’s job now to know what to do — and what not to do.
Bettman recalled when Bill Wirtz died on Sept. 26, 2007, and it was Rocky who took over the family businesses, including the Hawks.
“A couple of weeks after Bill’s funeral, I said to Rocky we should get together,” Bettman said. “So I flew out one afternoon and we spent six or seven hours together, talking and having dinner and getting better acquainted. We’re basically the same age, were in college at the same time. We had a number of experiences concerning the Blackhawks and his dad that we began to bond over.”
In the latter years, Bettman watched Danny take on bigger roles, including becoming an alternate governor.
“Rocky made sure that — while he didn’t obviously expect the succession to be this soon — everything had been put in place for an orderly succession,” Bettman said. “And my understanding is everything is going smoothly.
“You’ve got to remember that Danny had worked very closely with his father over the last decade, so he has been an integral part of the day-to-day operations of the Blackhawks.”
Bettman said he has been in regular contact with Danny since Rocky took ill.
“He’s stepping up and handling things in a very professional and mature way, which I think would make Rocky very proud,” he said.
Danny said the succession has come organically and thanked his father’s foresight.
“He was very realistic about his mortality,” Danny said. “He would always preface things with, ‘Well, I’m not going to be around forever.’ So in many ways, he was preparing me for this job since I started back in the family business.”
Danny, a Boston College graduate, started professional life outside the Wirtz bubble. He worked in marketing and branding at several companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but perhaps his oddest job was as a band assistant during Ministry’s U.S. tour in 1999 — still a meaningful experience.
Al Jourgensen, Ministry’s lead singer and a Hawks fan, detailed what he learned about Danny in a 2015 book, “Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen.”
“He’s a billionaire’s kid yet is the hardest-working, sweetest, most down-to-earth, together person in the history of the world,” Jourgensen wrote. “He could have been a complete (expletive) brat with the kind of old-school money he comes from. …. Instead he came and worked for Ministry at, literally, minimum wage — six, seven bucks an hour.
“I had this billionaire’s kid as my personal assistant on the road. He knew I was (expletive) up, and he didn’t judge me. … He kept all my talismans in line and separated — just dumb (expletive). Get me to the gig on time, which by that stage was no easy task. But that’s what he did. He did all this stupid stuff and did everything he could to get me on stage — and he never complained. Good old Danny Wirtz saved my ass more than once, that’s for sure.”
Danny got his first taste of the family liquor business in 2007 when he became director of global reserve brands at Judge & Dolph (which was renamed Wirtz Beverage Group in 2008). That year, Danny was named vice president of marketing and sales.
He went off on his own track in launching Banner, a video production company, in 2013, then joined creative studio Varyer as a partner in 2018.
Danny has held various executive roles with then-Wirtz Beverage Group since 2012. That company became one of the nation’s largest distributors of beer, wine and spirits in 2015 after merging with the Merinoff family’s Charmer Sunbelt Group to form Breakthru Beverage Group.
“When I moved back to Chicago about 15 years ago, obviously I was very focused on (the) beverage (business),” Danny said, “but over time — and this was another skill and strength of my dad — he really believed in exposing me to the other businesses, probably for a day like this.
“So I started to attend Joint Venture meetings at the United Center to get to know the business. I began to get to know our executives on the real estate side to understand that. Over time, I got to know the Blackhawks and how the business worked over here.”
Last week Danny was named co-chairman of Breakthru, which employs more than 9,000 associates, extends into Canada and takes in more than $8 billion in revenue annually, according to a company statement.
“This transition for me, it feels very natural,” Danny said. “It’s not easy, especially while grieving, but also I feel very prepared.”
Still, there are times during meetings when he catches himself parroting something Rocky would say or stopping to note which decisions Rocky would or wouldn’t like.
“There’s a refrain that we like to joke about in the family — and some of the business associates know — that he used the term, ‘Just figure it out,'” Danny said. “Which was his way of saying, ‘No challenge is too hard. We’ll just figure it out.’
“And in the context of his passing, obviously we’re in the middle of the figuring-it-out stage of life without him.”
A contrast in styles
Rocky would sport a tie and suit jacket with khakis, no problem. Danny is no stranger to a suit but seems like he would amend Casual Friday to be Casual Every Day.
Rocky could be matter-of-fact and sure of his opinions, but “we always talked things through,” Reinsdorf said.
“As a partner, we just never had a disagreement,” Reinsdorf said, “other than, as I said at his (private) memorial, I wanted to name one of the restaurants (at the United Center) ‘Rocky’s Place.’ He wouldn’t let me.”
Reinsdorf said Rocky “had a great ability to grasp facts when presentations were made to him.”
Danny agreed: “My dad had tremendous business instincts that he could react on quickly and get to that answer very quickly. I don’t know that I have those same skills, so I just take a little different route.
“(Rocky) didn’t like waiting around or overcomplicating or bureaucracy. I do like process. I like strategy. I like planning but with the same end goal in mind.”
Bené has worked with both Wirtzes and said Rocky would lay out a big directive and then step away to let others get it done.
“Juxtapose that with Danny, where Danny and I have standing calls every week,” he said.
Rocky had his own generational divide with his father, Bill, and he talked about those differences with Danny.
“Part of (Rocky’s) skill was to know that ‘this (particular thing) is something that Danny will be good at,'” Danny said. “And there’s things that he was really good at. So we worked well together.
“He helped push me to trust my gut and instincts. And I probably pushed him to take a more strategic approach or look at it more holistically.”
Bené noted how, in the last 18 months, Danny has pushed Breakthru to make three acquisitions, seizing on a growth opportunity it might not have pursued in the past.
“He had the benefit of his father’s thinking, (but) as the industry evolves, he’s got that ability to kind of shift and evolve with it,” Bené said. “He’s not set in any historical ways of doing things.”
Bené called Danny a “big collaborator.” Bettman said he’s a “careful listener.” Reinsdorf said he’s “really a nice person and he’s bright. And he’s easy to talk to.”
Reinsdorf also offered some advice.
“He can’t allow himself to be influenced by outside sources who do not have facts,” said Reinsdorf, who has weathered his share of public criticism over hirings and firings in both the White Sox and Bulls front offices. “In other words, he can’t let himself be controlled by media and fans.
“He should take into account the opinions of fans, but he has to recognize that they don’t have the facts he has. So he has to make decisions he thinks are correct, based upon the facts, not based upon what other people think.”
It’s a common thread about Danny that he acknowledged during the interview: He’s viewed more as the nice guy. Can he fire someone or be the risk-taker who writes the big check at the right time? Can he be as hard-nosed as Rocky?
Danny said he can be as direct and demanding as other chief executives, just in a dispassionate way — based on spelled-out objectives rather than instilling fear in people.
“It’s not an edict from above,” he said. “It’s very much like, on an annual basis we go through (our goals). We talk about it, and if there’s something that I’m not comfortable with or I think we can push a little harder, I’ll let the team know. If there’s an area where I think they’re being too aggressive and it’s going to jeopardize something else, I’ll let them know.
“This goes to my style. I like goals, I like expectations, I like accountability. I try to be very clear on those expectations, hold people accountable and then support the heck out of them. That’s my thing, so hopefully we don’t have to have the tough conversation.
“But throughout my career, I’ve had to make some really hard calls when the performance hasn’t been there.”
Danny said Rocky was more concerned about taking care of the business and less about how he took care of business.
“He didn’t want a clone of himself,” Danny said. “He knew that I had different skills and talents than he did, and he embraced that.”
Danny’s vision
It likely will evolve over time, but for now, where the Hawks are concerned, Danny is focused mainly on two things: growing and diversifying the fan base and ramping up the team’s use of technology.
“We haven’t cast the broadest net possible,” he said. “There’s still fans to be had, there’s fans to recruit, there’s people to teach about the sport. This is less about resurrection and more about growth.”
Attendance at Hawks home games topped 20,000 per game for 12 seasons but fell to about 17,000 last year.
When they won the draft lottery and the right to select Connor Bedard, ticket sales shot up. The Hawks also credit flexible and creative new options for ticket buying, but they’re a technological pain.
“The fact that people can buy Original Six (ticket) packages, they can buy Friday night packages, these are great ways to purchase tickets,” Danny said. “Sounds very simple, but actually it’s kind of complicated from a back-end standpoint.”
But any upgrades in the stands pale in comparison with the product on the ice.
“There’s levers that (general manager) Kyle (Davidson) and the team can pull to quickly get some short-term wins,” Danny said. “We are building for long-term wins, sustainable wins and staying in a competitive position for as long as possible.
“So to do that, you have to sometimes make harder short-term decisions to get to that better place. Kyle and I are aligned on this: There’s going to be no shortcuts into building this next championship team.
“There will be a time when we’re moving through the building process and we’re getting into clearer performance expectations. And then those goals will be adjusted and we’ll be really clear on what we expect: playoffs, rounds (of playoffs), (Stanley) Cups, all those things.”
One last story about the storyteller
Danny thought back to May, when the Hawks held an NHL draft lottery watch party at the United Center’s FanDuel lounge. He invited Rocky, who had committed to dinner with a visiting priest from Ohio.
The Hawks won the lottery that night — a huge stroke of luck with a prize of first dibs at Bedard.
“First call is to Dad and it was very emotional for him,” Danny said. “I think he was just so relieved that we were going to have a chance to have the success that he had.
“In many ways, he felt he had his time. He said, ‘Let’s get four generations on that Stanley Cup.’ So I said, ‘That’s the mandate.’ “
Drafting Bedard in June seemed a foregone conclusion, but Danny thought it was important for Rocky to get to know the next potential franchise player, so the Hawks set up a get-together during development camp.
“Connor and the team and the prospects had finished their boxing class with coach Luke (Richardson),” Danny said, “so we grabbed a sandwich and we just popped into the coach’s office — Kyle, myself, my dad and Connor Bedard.”
Rocky shared some life stories and asked Bedard about his.
“And then we say goodbye,” Danny said. “And that was the last time I saw my dad (healthy).
“So there’s a sort of poetic aspect to this. He didn’t have a chance to see Connor play, and plenty has been written about my grandfather (Bill) having a similar experience with Patrick Kane: meeting him, being part of the draft and then unfortunately not being able to see him in his rookie year.
“But I like to look at that as sort of this very hopeful and special memory we had. As we enter this next generation of players, my dad was able to see it get set up and see the spark get lit.”
