It’s been an interesting week for NHL owners. In Buffalo, Terry Pegula watched his team get embarrassed while fans chanted for him to fire the GM or sell the team. In Philadelphia, Comcast dropped a surprise announcement of a new arena, a goal Michael Andlauer is still chasing in Ottawa. And maybe the biggest news is the lack of an acceptable owner (among other issues) standing in the way of the league’s return to Arizona.

Not quite business as usual, but not far off in a league where a team’s owner is often just as important as the best player or the GM — and sometimes much more important. If you’re lucky, your team has a good owner, or at least one who does no harm. But as with any other North American pro sport, a bad owner can feel like a death sentence for a team’s hopes of a championship.

As a fan who grew up rooting for Harold Ballard’s Toronto Maple Leafs, I have some expertise in this area. So today, let’s break down the nine levels of bad ownership hell. I sincerely hope you don’t recognize your own team’s situation on this list.

Level 1: The Missing Person

We’ll start simple. The Missing Person owner is the one you rarely see. In extreme cases, you may not even know their name.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. In fact, some of the best owners in sports get dangerously close to this territory. You could even argue it’s the ideal — the owner should be some billionaire who shows up to sign the checks and then is never seen again until it’s time to engrave the trophy.

The problem is most teams don’t get that trophy, and when the inevitable happens and things go south, a fan base might want to hear from the boss. In those moments, an owner who can calm the waters by communicating a vision is a good thing. If the only time you see the owner’s face is on the side of a milk carton, it can feel like the ship is missing its rudder.

All that said, this is only Level 1 because it’s a situation that’s often tolerable, and sometimes even preferable. If your owner falls into one of the categories further down our list, you’re probably begging for a Missing Person owner.

(An important note: Level 1 here represents the owners who are The Missing Person and nothing else. But as we’ll see, often a bad owner can fall into more than one category on this list, and if so, the highest level prevails.)

Level 2: The Schmoozer

The problem with this owner is they don’t seem all that interested in winning. Instead, their top priority seems to be simply being part of the pro sports world. That means they end up trying to get a little too close to the players, want to be included in trade talks and other sports guy business, and seem starstruck by alumni and former stars. Other symptoms include referring to their team president by his playing days nickname and awkwardly wearing a team jersey in way too many photographs.

The good news is The Schmoozer isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be a bad owner, and in fact can even stumble into a winning situation if they surround themselves with the right people. If being a Schmoozer is the worst of an owner’s sins, a GM or team president who knows how to “manage up” and play to their ego can make the whole situation work.

And it had better work. Because if it doesn’t, don’t expect this owner to make any hard decisions about going in a different direction. This owner is here to make friends and book golf foursomes, and they’re not going to screw it up by firing somebody over a little thing like missing the playoffs every year.

Level 3: The Superstar

This is the owner who has to be front and center on absolutely everything. They’re basically the flipside of The Missing Person because they’ve never met a camera or a microphone they didn’t need to shove their face into.

And like The Missing Person, their act can be fine when the team is winning. But when it’s not, The Superstar starts to feel like a distraction. A fan base might even start questioning their motives. Hey boss, are you here to win, or are you here to pump up your own ego?

While we won’t give them their own category, we should pause here to acknowledge a special kind of awful owner: The one that starts off as The Superstar but then turns into The Missing Person when things go south. After all, some owners might fall into Level 1 because they legitimately don’t like the attention, and as a fan, you can maybe live with that. But the owner who wants to be front and center at the victory parade but disappears as soon as the going gets tough? Awful.

Level 4: The Cheapskate

The Cheapskate isn’t necessarily a bad owner; they could be a decent person and even a good boss. The problem is they just don’t spend enough on the team, either directly on the roster (which shows up in unused cap space) or on everything around it (which can mean shoddy facilities, promotions, marketing and beyond).

Why not? Maybe they don’t have the money to compete with the big kids. Or maybe they could if they wanted to, but don’t because they’re more focused on the bottom line than on winning. As a fan, it really doesn’t matter. You either spend to compete, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you probably don’t win.

Life with this kind of owner becomes a repetitive drumbeat of falling just short on free agents, failing to land sought-after coaches and executives, and (worst of all) watching other teams back up the Brinks truck to steal away your homegrown stars. And of course, there’s always an excuse, some mumbled nonsense about fiscal responsibility that you just don’t want to hear.

You might expect The Cheapskate to show up even further down the list, but on some level, at least, most of us can relate. We’ve all been in situations where we wanted something we just couldn’t afford and had to make tough decisions. And many of these owners may be holdovers who bought in during an earlier era, only to be priced out by rising costs. But while you can sympathize on some level, it’s completely fair to look at a cash-strapped owner and say: Buddy, you own the team. You can either afford this or you can’t, and if this league is out of your price range then maybe it’s time to find a new hobby.

Level 5: The Anti-Realist

This owner buys a team, finishes the introductory press conference and then immediately wants to know why they haven’t won a championship yet.

On one level, that’s not a bad thing — you want an owner who expects to win. But the problem is this boss has no plan. They just expect a trophy to magically fall into their lap, probably because everything else they’ve ever wanted in life already has. So they start firing people, demanding roster shakeups and doing disastrous media hits. Pretty soon, nobody with any better options wants to work for them, which leads to a bunch of suboptimal hires, which leads to more firings and … you get the idea.

After a while, it can feel like your favorite team is being run by the dumbest, most impatient people from its Reddit forum. And in a way, it kind of is.

Level 6: The Participation Trophy

The polar opposite of Level 5, this is the owner who doesn’t seem to be aware that they’re supposed to want to win.

I went back and forth on whether this owner belonged on its own level, or whether they were just a particular combination of either The Missing Person or The Schmoozer and (usually) The Cheapskate. But I think there’s more to this level because these owners are often involved in all sorts of other elements of the franchise. They’re happy to gladhand with corporate sponsors. They’re probably involved in some admirable community initiatives. They sure do love to unveil redesigned uniforms. A lot of them will even happily spend money on new stadiums or renovations or even a fancy private jet and new practice facility.

In fact, this owner can do it all. Well, except for that one thing … what was it … oh right, winning something. As long as the rest of the business is running smoothly, they don’t seem to get too caught up in what the standings might say. But hey, these new uniforms are looking sharp, right?

Level 7: The Smartest Guy in the Room

Oh no.

This is where our list takes a steep drop because the last three levels are easily the worst. And that starts here, with the owner who’s absolutely convinced they’re a genius. After all, the fact they own a team in the first place means they have a lot of money, which implies they’ve been very successful in life. Could they have reached that level of success if they weren’t one of the smartest people alive? Absolutely, as even a brief look at the current world would remind you, but this owner doesn’t know that.

So they want to be involved in everything — not because of their massive ego, mind you, but because they’re simply the best person for the job. Yes, every job. Hiring or firing people? Setting a long-term strategy? Making granular roster decisions? Choosing the concession stand menus? You name it, this owner needs to be in on it. It only makes sense.

In theory, this isn’t actually a bad situation as long as the owner really is smarter than everyone else. In reality, this has never happened. Not once. Ever, in any sport.

A fun side effect of being The Smartest Guy in the Room is that you’re immune to criticism because you’re also smarter than the experts, the media and even your fan base. Oh, everyone thinks you’re a disaster and they’re begging for you to sell the team? They would think that because they’re just not on your galaxy-brained level.

The Smartest Guy in the Room is probably also The Superstar, right up until things go bad, at which point they become The Missing Person. And they also have to fire everyone under them because how dumb could you be to somehow fail when you have an unquestionably brilliant masterplan handed right to you?

Level 8: The Sideshow

We’re getting close to the worst-case scenario here. The Sideshow is a mix of a bunch of the categories above, and maybe even all of them. But somehow, they manage to take things even further. They’re so bad that they transcend all of that, and become a singularity of franchise embarrassment.

In other words, The Melnyk Zone.

Often, this level will involve some sort of personal scandal. Even if it falls just short of that, it still takes on a TMZ quality, where nothing feels truly off limits. We’re talking Donald Stirling. Woody Johnson. Marge Schott. Dan Snyder. And yes, absolutely Harold Ballard.

The Sideshow doesn’t just bring down the team, they end up transcending it. They’re the face of the franchise, in the worst possible way. You can never win with this owner, but their ego is so huge they’ll almost never sell, meaning an entire generation of a fan base is left to swim in utter misery.

Cheering for a team with an owner who’s some combination of the first seven levels is bad, even cataclysmic. But at least you can usually find some small sliver of hope. Not if you’re stuck with The Sideshow. If this is your favorite team’s owner, it may be time to give up and consider a new hobby.

They’re the absolute worst. With one exception …

Level 9: The Deserter

This is the owner who wants to move the team.

I don’t even have any jokes here because if you’ve ever been through this as a fan, you know it’s rock bottom. It doesn’t even really matter how the owner goes about pulling off their heist. Maybe they sneak out in the middle of the night like a coward. Or maybe they play the long game, crying crocodile tears about how hard they’re trying to stay while working behind the scenes to make sure it can’t happen.

Either way, it’s the ultimate betrayal of a fan base, one that many never fully recover from. They deserve every bit of vitriol they get, and your contempt for them should be passed on to future generations. Even if your favorite team’s owner checks every box from 1 through 8 on today’s list, you can at least be thankful they’re not this one.

(At least not yet. It can always get worse.)

(Top photo of Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula at a Buffalo Bills game in 2023: Timothy T Ludwig / Getty Images)