Harry Ornest (June 30, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was a sports entrepreneur who once owned the

St. Louis Blues The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis. The Blues compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the s ...

of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

(NHL) and the

Toronto Argonauts The Toronto Argonauts (officially the Toronto Argonaut Football Club and colloquially known as the Argos) are a professional Canadian football team competing in the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), based in Toronto, Ontario ...

of the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

(CFL). He also played minor league baseball, was a linesman in the NHL, and a referee in the American Hockey League.http://www.canoe.ca/HockeyStLouisArchive/jul21_har.html

Biography

Ornest was born in Edmonton, Canada, the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. He is of Jewish descent. He made his fortune in vending machines. In 1978 he founded the minor league baseball franchise, the Vancouver Canadians, which played in the

Pacific Coast League The Pacific Coast League (PCL) is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the Western United States. Along with the International League, it is one of two leagues playing at the Triple-A (baseball), Triple-A level, which is one grade bel ...

. He purchased a majority of the assets of

Sick's Stadium Sick's Stadium, also known as Sick's Seattle Stadium and later as Sicks' Stadium, was a baseball park in the northwest United States in Seattle, Washington. It was located in Rainier Valley, on the NE corner of S. McClellan Street and Rainier Av ...

in Seattle for $60,000 to use in the new team's ballpark, Nat Bailey Stadium. Ornest was the owner of the St. Louis Blues from 1983 to 1986. Ornest proved to be the savior for a city that was on the verge of losing their team. Although the Blues maintained consistency in making the Stanley Cup playoffs since 1980, financial troubles had racked the team (owned by Ralston Purina, a pet food giant based in the city). They lost nearly $2 million a year for six straight years before Ralston wanted to re-focus their attention back to profits. The only thing that would stand between them moving to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan ended up being the Board of Governors, who rejected an attempt to move the gutted team (which fired 60% of their staff) there. Ralston and the NHL soon sued each other and each came up with ultimatums involving dissolving the assets of the team. August 6 was the deadline before the NHL would have held a dispersal draft. Days before the deadline, Ornest (who had aspired to buy the team since and a group of city-based investors made a bid for the team, and on July 27, the league approved the bid. He would run the team with a shoestring budget while utilizing deferred salaries to meet costs, which included having less players on contract than other teams and trading players when dealing with salary pinching; Mike Liut was the most notable case of this, as he was traded in the middle of the 1984-85 season to the Hartford Whalers despite the Blues leading the division. When he owned the Blues, Ornest changed their arena's name from the Checkerdome back to the

St. Louis Arena St. Louis Arena (known as the Checkerdome from 1977 to 1983) was an indoor arena in St. Louis, Missouri. The country's second-largest indoor entertainment venue when it opened in 1929, it was home to the St. Louis Blues and other sports franchis ...

. In his three years of ownership, the team went 106-106-28 while reaching the postseason thrice, which included making the Campbell Conference Finals in 1986, which they would not do again until 2001. In 1986, he sold the team to Missouri native Mike Shanahan while selling the Arena to the city of St. Louis (mayor

Vincent C. Schoemehl Vincent C. Schoemehl, Jr. (born October 30, 1946 in St. Louis) was the 42nd mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, serving three terms from 1981 to 1993. At the time of his first election, he was one of the city's youngest mayors. In 1992, Schoemehl was def ...

had approached Shanahan about becoming an owner). He owned the Toronto Argonauts from 1988 to 1991.

References

External links

Baseball ReferenceLos Angeles Times: obituary
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ornest, Harry 1923 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Edmonton National Hockey League executives St. Louis Blues owners Toronto Argonauts owners Canadian emigrants to the United States