Mike Hope was the LA Kings Public Relations Director for several seasons in the mid-1970s, a period in which turned out to be a pioneering a single for the Kings in many ways.

Coming to the Kings from the Portland Trailblazers, Desire brought a wealth of PR expertise to the table, which he used to help build the Kings a fantastic public relations structure, much of which is still thriving today – not just with the Kings, but with some other teams and other sports also.

Hope recently took the time to share his most outstanding stories from a work centered in the entertainment funds of the world. The following is the second section of a summary of those stories, Part I debuted on LAKings.com last Friday and can be read here: http://kings.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=742681.

ON THE CELEBRITY Benefit of LOS ANGELES

The NHL at that time was putting together a League-wide insert into the golf club magazine called ‘Goal Magazine.’ It was eight pages and it was going to go into every team’azines program. They called me personally up – again, we had won the award two years consecutively for being the best PR section in the NHL – and they wanted myself to be the West Coast Editor for Goal Magazine.#8 Anaheim Ducks Teemu Selanne Premier Black Home Jersey These people wanted me to do superstar interviews for Goal Journal so that when they would perform a national insert, they would have a Hollywood celebrity featured. The National Hockey League is trying to ascertain itself in the 1970s, and also this gave them prestige because if you’re sitting in Detroit, Toronto or perhaps Philadephia, you are going to read about some The show biz industry celebrity and of course it gives favor.

So I make a deal with Joe Thicke, and I say ‘OK, you want to expose your name in Artist, and I need Hollywood celebrities. You decide to go get Hollywood celebrities, bring these phones the Forum for the Nobleman games, I’ll give you status seats, but the deal is that the celebrity, during the first intermission, needs to do a TV interview together with either the Kings or even the visiting team, and during the second intermission, has to do a Home Container Office interview, and at the same time frame, has to sit for an interview together with Goal Magazine. Some of the celebrities we got at that time were Her Fonda, Jimmy Connors and Steve Garvey.

The visiting groups went crazy, and they would obtain excited about what star they were going to get. So Alan Thicke was able to ingratiate his name into the Hollywood community because he became the go-to guy to get people to come to the particular hockey games. At the same time the actual reward for coming to the particular hockey game, these actors and actresses could get exposure in L . a ..

To build the exposure for that Kings and to build everyone else, we had the local effort.  We had the national effort.

ON Page rank STUNTS

Miss Cyndi was the streaker at the Kings game. She came out, there were her in a fur layer right before the game started, there were her on skates – we found someone that could skate all things considered – we gave her a Kings pendant, and before the game we alerted all the TV stations. It was a big sport, I think it was Philly. So that of a sudden, Miss Cyndi happens from where the Kings arrived, she takes off her fur coat, she’s naked except for her skates and a Kings necklace, she skates right down the glaciers right by the penalty containers where all the TV reporters are,Ryan Kesler Jersey the crowd goes insane, and the people were filming it, and this roar goes through the group. Somebody threw her coat coat on her and whisked her out of the Forum.

ON ANTHEM VARIETY

At that time we had Frank Mahoney to sing out the anthems. He really was our superstar. He wouldn’t carry out every game, but when he would come it would always be the big game titles. I started a tradition, a turn – I would do ‘Star Spangled Banner’ a single game, the next game I might do ‘God Bless America,’ and subsequently game I would do ‘America the Beautiful,’ and I would turn that every game, and it merely broke up the monotony. We might energize the crowd by using Joe Mahoney and using different national anthems to obtain the crowd ready for when the actual Kings came onto the glaciers.

ON BOB MILLER

Bob Miller had started out a month before I did – all of us started together in 1963 and have been best friends ever since. One of the things I asked him that first year was ‘What is your philosophy on broadcasting?#31 Anaheim Ducks Frederik Andersen Authentic Black Home Jersey’ Then one of the things he said that I’lmost all never forget was he said ‘Paul, all I really want to do besides paint the picture for the audience of the action in the game, transpire is I want to say ‘he or she shoots, he scores’ before the roar of the crowd. To put the listener in the position of being in the arena so that he learns the action of the game before the shout of the crowd and the crowd doesn’t know what happened.’ He's maintained that philosophy regarding 43 years, and that’utes why he’s in the Hallway of Fame. It is a very simple statement to make, but if you think about it from the context regarding listening to a hockey video game, that’s why Bob is indeed great. He puts themselves in the position of the listener. Their whole philosophy is to ensure the listener of the game, or even in this case the viewer, hears what happened before the roar from the crowd drowns it out. It’s a remarkable insight into why he’s so good.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Today, people would die to acquire a Kings ticket. In the old days, we might die to give them away. Therefore it’s how we built the Kings exposure in the 1970's – obviously we didn’t possess Wayne Gretzky, we didn’t have a Stanley Cup, we didn’t have STAPLES Center. We had to go out and create an interest in this thing called hockey.