Continued: Wild's Leipold: Executive by trade, fan at heart

Sunday: Zygi Wilf, Vikings

Monday: Glen Taylor, Wolves

Today: Craig Leipold, Wild

Wednesday: Pohlads, Twins

In most venues, Craig Leipold -- "the Big Babooski" to his friends -- is a gentle giant.

The multimillionaire's phone number is listed, he enters the arena through Gate 1 like everyone else, he loves a juicy burger and cold beer.

Get used to seeing Leipold roam the Xcel Energy Center corridors in the seasons to come.

He permanently resides 350 miles away in Racine, Wis., but he signed a 10-year exclusive lease for the 2,400-square-foot, 14th-floor penthouse at the St. Paul Hotel.

This way, the 56-year-old can keep a close eye on his newest toy -- the Wild, which he purchased from Bob Naegele for $260 million last season.

"I like the fact I can walk from where I'm living to work, and here, I don't even have to go outside in the winter," Leipold said from his office at Wild headquarters.

And if you ever run into the man with a hockey mullet and infectious laugh, he's as approachable as a miniature bichon.

"This is a big business guy who runs in big political circles, but he walks with kings with the touch of a common man," said close friend Joe Sweeney, an investment banker who used to be marketing agent for Brett Favre, LeRoy Butler, Barry Alvarez and Robin Yount, among others. "Craig is as down to earth as anybody I've ever met.

"The greatest thing I can say about Craig Leipold is he's got 100 best friends. He's so busy. He's got five kids, a wonderful, successful wife, tons of business ventures, yet he's there for so many people, a hundred people call Craig Leipold their best friend."

But there is one venue at which you don't want to cross Leipold, one sanctuary where he better not be disturbed by anyone, including his wife, five boys ranging in age from 12 to 31 and those 100 best friends.

If you ever accidentally stumble into the owners' suite during a Wild home game, enter at your own risk.

"Intense is an understatement," said Helen, his wife of 21 years. "We all know not to cross the line when we're in the box. He lives and dies by every minute of the game. You can't sit in the two seats on each side of him, and you definitely can't at all talk to him."

When Leipold owned the Nashville Predators, a few HDTVs crossed his path and didn't live to tell about it.

"I take the stat sheet -- it's the perfect size -- and I roll it up and it's always in my hand so I have something to pound," Leipold says. "A few times, I may have accidentally hit the TV with the paper.

"I remember, the suite managers used to come in, look at the TV and say, 'Oh no, somebody from above must have thrown something and hit the TV again,' " Leipold said, hysterically laughing.

A hands-on owner, but patient

So passionate, so nervous, so focused during games, Leipold calls himself "a pathetic, immature, absolute die-hard fan."

When the game's over, just like any player, coach or general manager, there's a period of high when his team wins, low when it loses. Leipold can't sleep after either.

Yet somehow, he's able to turn it off the next day. Despite being a deeply hands-on owner, by all accounts, he doesn't meddle. He doesn't make knee-jerk decisions. He has never demanded a player be traded. In 10 years in Nashville, he employed only one GM -- David Poile -- and one coach -- Barry Trotz.

"He was very respectful and understanding of the so-called pecking order," Poile said. "He never once went to Barry to talk to him about the hockey team. He always went through me and allowed the people put in charge to make decisions make decisions."

So, in a lot of ways, Leipold is the natural successor to Naegele. The Wild has also had one GM -- Doug Risebrough -- and one coach -- Jacques Lemaire.

Leipold plans to continue that stability.

"Because he's a good businessman," said Helen, who would know. The great-great-granddaughter of Samuel C. Johnson, Helen Johnson-Leipold is chairman and CEO of Johnson Outdoors and chairman of the board of Johnson Financial Group. She's worth $2.2 billion, ranking 204th of the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes magazine in 2007.

"After games, he recovers and becomes rational again," Helen said.

Need evidence that Leipold doesn't want to interfere with hockey decisions? Leipold was so uncomfortable in his hockey operations office, he moved upstairs to the Wild's third floor in July so he can make more of an impact in the Wild's day-to-day business.

"The contribution that I want to provide the team is more in the marketing and sales, and strategic planning and budgeting," Leipold said. "[Risebrough's] area is to make hockey decisions, and I don't want to get in their way.

"Doug understands clearly these are his decisions. My job is to budget and his job is to spend up to that budget. Frankly, we're talking about the [$56.7 million salary] cap here. This is his job. This is what he's paid to do."

But Risebrough keeps Leipold under his "thinking tent."

"I have never given him an idea because it doesn't matter," Leipold said. "It might as well be Joe Blow on the street. Doug's mind-set is as GM and president. Mine is as fan and owner. The person I want making decisions on the players is a guy who thinks like a GM, not like an owner or fan."

Started his own business

Passion and competition have guided Leipold his entire life. "Not just hockey. If he plays golf with you, he wants to win. If you're out to dinner, it's all about the best wine or best cigars," Poile said.

Leipold is one of two sons of a German immigrant, Werner (Lefty) Leipold, who worked his way up to vice president of Kimberly-Clark in Neenah, Wis., and mother Betty Jo.

As a kid, he played baseball and basketball. His athletic claim to fame was "playing" in the 1969 Wisconsin state championship basketball game. LaMont Weaver was a junior at Beloit Memorial and banked a 55-footer with two seconds left to force overtime and eventually beat Leipold's Neenah Rockets.

"For years, Craig convinced me he played an integral part in that game," Sweeney said, laughing. "It wasn't until I pushed him years later that I learned he was actually the 15th man and saw Weaver's shot from the bench."

Leipold and his family moved to Conway, Ark., just before his senior year of high school. Leipold later got a degree in political science at Hendrix College in Conway.

At age 29, Leipold gave up a salesman job at Kimberly-Clark to start his own business, Ameritel Corporation, one of the nation's first telemarketing firms. He sold his half of the company to American Express for more money than he ever dreamed of by age 34.

In between, he met Helen, whom Leipold calls the athlete in the family (she's in the tennis Hall of Fame at Cornell University), at a sales meeting in Miami in 1985. They were assigned to a golf foursome at Doral's Blue Monster, and "the second I saw her legs, I said, 'That's it.'"

Leipold then bought Rainfair, a rainwear manufacturer and importer, but his dream was to own a professional sports franchise.

"I've talked to him about this for almost 20 years, and to be able to see a guy who had a vision and passion, and then watch him intelligently and systematically go after it and bring his dream to fruition, it's extraordinary," said Sweeney, now managing director at Corporate Financial Advisors and a finalist for the recently filled Green Bay Packers CEO job.

There were stumbles, of course. Leipold tried to buy the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, then wanted to buy and move the NBA's Sacramento Kings to Nashville. But that was the precursor to buying the NHL-expansion Predators in 1997.

At the time, Sweeney was president of the Wisconsin Sports Authority and was bringing the NCAA Frozen Four to the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

"Craig calls me and says, 'Can you call [then-University of Wisconsin hockey coach] Jeff Sauer and get me the rules of hockey, like what offsides is? I'm about to spend $80 million to buy a pro franchise.'

"I said, 'You're doing what? You don't know what offsides and icing is, and you're buying a pro team?' ... Then I watch this guy get to know this product, fall in love with this product and sell and teach hockey to the country music capital of the world."

Soon after, Leipold made hockey his full-time job.

"I was half a day a week working on hockey stuff. Now I'm four," Leipold said. "I remember it like it was yesterday. I'm sitting in a conference room at Rainfair and I'm having a weekly staff meeting and they're talking about union issues we were having and some of the manufacturing challenges that were going on in my plant -- boring kind of detail stuff -- and my mind was wandering about what it would take to re-sign [Predators holdout goalie] Mike Dunham.

"Suddenly, it goes quiet and everybody's looking at me. 'Oh, God, I'm sorry, what are you guys talking about?' I realized right there. This is not what I want to do anymore. I went back to my office and basically said, 'I'm selling this thing.'

"I just love hockey, and when you can't play, owning a team is the best of both worlds. It's fast, it's physical. These guys, without a question in my mind, are the greatest athletes in the world. What they do, and how they do it, on a thin sheet of steel on top of frozen water, is to me the most incredible thing in the world."

Today, Leipold and his wife own an 18,000-square-foot mansion in Racine that features a 12-foot-by-5-foot slice of the Berlin Wall at the front.

With Leipold and his wife so busy, the biggest challenge is finding time for family. Helen says "family always comes first" and she plays tennis every morning at 5:30 a.m. "because the kids are still sleeping."

"My dad was a great role model from a work perspective, and a great role model from a father perspective," Craig Leipold said. "Clearly it's where I get the way I operate, what my priorities are. He'd always find time to make all my baseball and basketball games."

Attracting top talent is key

Leipold feels fortunate to own the Wild, which has sold out every game in franchise history. His lone goal, he says, is to deliver Minnesota a Stanley Cup.

He proved to be a big-league owner in Nashville, allowing Poile to sign free agents Paul Kariya, Jason Arnott, J.P. Dumont and trade for Peter Forsberg.

Risebrough has similar green lights, and the Wild tried to sign Marian Hossa, Kristian Huselius, Markus Naslund and Brendan Morrison this summer. On those talents, the Wild struck out.

"The Kariyas, Arnotts, Dumonts wanted to play in Nashville, and we have to have that same culture here," Leipold said. "Paul Kariya was a guy who could bring other players with him even if they didn't know him. That's something we probably need to get here -- that one player that makes the statement that this is the team where you want to be.

"But no one can say we didn't try to get a lot of players this summer. We did, and we all know who they were. We tried hard and put big money on the table to do it -- more money than the teams that signed them, but they all had reasons why it just didn't work out like geography [with Morrison in Anaheim], a friend [in Fredrik Modin with Huselius in Columbus] and Detroit [with Hossa]. We're going to have our year where we have a connection with one of those great free agents, and we'll take advantage.

"But my philosophy is, 'If there's a chance to win, you go for it.' I mean, we're all in this for one thing, absolutely one thing, and that's to win the Stanley Cup. I don't want it to ever be said that we were almost there but couldn't quite get over the hump because we couldn't get that last player."