Jim Souhan: Leipold has always been the passionate entrepreneur

The best sports owner in the Twin Cities sits in the second row of seats in his luxury suite. He is eye-level with the Xcel Energy Center's massive new scoreboard. A big-screen TV is propped in the corner of the suite, so he can watch replays. It is placed just out of reach, so he can't bust it — "I'd say I've broken fewer than five, and more than three," he says with a laugh — with a backhand.

Craig Leipold is the rare owner who is both down to earth and good at his job. As he twists a few stat sheets into a wad, grumbling about the performance of a certain player, his father stands in the back of the suite, grinning.

"The bottle is always half-full with that one," Werner Leipold said. "He always believes his team is going to win the Stanley Cup."

That hasn't happened yet. Leipold, who bought an expansion NHL franchise before he "knew what offsides was," he said, has owned the Nashville Predators and the Minnesota Wild. As Leipold grumbled and exulted during a preseason game on a recent weeknight, his father said he saw early signs of business acumen from his son.

"When he was little, there was a construction site near our house," Werner Leipold said. "They were building a school. So Craig started bringing them ice. For a price. Then, he started bringing them soda, for a little more money.

"Then one of the guys told him that if he wanted to make real money, he should bring them beer. I had to put a stop to it after Craig sold all of my Miller Lites."

Said Craig, "I was making so much money, I couldn't believe it."

Werner's nickname is "Lefty," from his days as a pitcher. He instilled a love of baseball and basketball in Craig when he was growing up in Neenah, Wis. "Craig was a good baseball player," Werner said.

Werner's father moved from Germany to the United States in 1928, landing a job at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee. Werner and his mother followed the next year.

An engineering student, Werner found himself as a navigator on a troop carrier in the Pacific during World War II. "Then, I wound up with the worst job you could have," he said, a twinkle in his eye. "Navigator on a refrigeration ship. That meant fresh fruits and vegetables during the war. We pulled into a port with fresh pineapple, we could trade that for pretty much anything we wanted."

After the war, Werner landed a job with the personal-care products company Kimberly-Clark. He was assigned to oversee construction in Memphis, and wound up sharing an apartment with two co-workers.

"The apartment had been shared by American Airlines flight attendants," Werner said. "I was dating one of them. I took her to the airport one night and dropped her off, and here was one of her roommates waiting for her ride, and it never showed up.

Werner and Betty Jo have been married for 65 years. The other night they seemed as amused by their gregarious, energetic son as when he was a child.

"We got called to his school when he was little," Werner said. "We found out that someone named Craig had written his name into a glass window at the school. We had to say we were sorry.

"Years later, he calls us and says, 'I've been up to Neenah, had some time on my hands, so I went over to the school and, my God, Dad, it still says Craig on the window!' He was a handful. Nothing serious, but he was always into something. His mother says, 'Craig, if you had been the first-born, you'd be the only child.' "

Craig listens to some of the stories about his childhood, laughing and slapping friends on the back … until the puck drops. Then he reclaimed his seat and re-wadded the papers in his hand.

"Lefty" watched and chuckled.

Leipold got a job there without his father's knowledge. He wound up running a new telemarketing distributorship. "The idea was that we would service outlying areas from a phone bank in Neenah," Werner said. "It's commonplace now, but it was a new thing then."

Leipold and a buddy realized this could become the new, new thing in business. They started their own company, then sold it for a small fortune.

Craig started a company selling foul-weather gear in Racine, Wis., and sold that, too. "He kept the building, though," Werner said. "He still makes good money off of that."

With a state-of-the-art building, full houses and a promising team, Leipold's probably making a little money these days, too, but during a game, he can't help but act like a fan.

"I never cared about hockey," Werner said. "Now I'm like him. I'm hooked."