According to the ex-president of the Prudential Center, Lou Lamoriello negatively affected his livelihood. Richard Krezwick claims that Lamoriello’s constant cursing and disparaging him cost him the $2.25 million he could have made under the new ownership team. That “criticism” led to Krezwick suing Lamoriello for (at least) that cool two million.
In a nutshell, Krezwick is the former president of Devils Arena Entertainment, the company that runs the Prudential Center and is the parent company of the New Jersey Devils. Lamoriello, he says, resented then-owner Jeff Vanderbeek’s decision to hold Krezwick responsible for the team’s business operations upon Krezwick’s hiring in 2009. This decision would leave Lamoriello in charge of hockey operations.
According to NJ.com, the lawsuit says that “because Krezwick assumed Lamoriello’s former business responsibilities, Lamoriello harbored ill will toward Krezwick and treated Krezwick as his nemesis throughout the rest of Plaintiff’s tenure with DAE (Devils Arena Entertainment).”
The lawsuit goes on to, essentially, call Lamoriello a difficult man to deal with over the course of several 2011 sit-downs. “The meetings continued to occur and grow more acrimonious for several months, until the final meeting when Lamoriello launched into a vulgarity-laced personal attack on Krezwick,” the lawsuit states. “Lamoriello then abruptly left the room and refused to resume that meeting or take part in any future meetings,” it says.
Lamoriello allegedly continued by threatening that he would not renew his own contract, which also includes his position as club president, if Krezwick was presented with a new offer. When Vanderbeek extended Krezwick an offer, Lamoriello allegedly badmouthed his capabilities not only to the Devils’ management, but also to other teams around the league. After the team was sold to Joshua Harris and David Blitzer in the summer of 2013, Krezwick says he was fired in front of his 100 employees without prior warning.
The lawsuit paints a cruel picture of Lamoriello here. “Lamoriello physically positioned himself in a chair at the base of the employee elevator of the arena so that he could watch these individuals pass by with their boxes of personal belongings in order to leave the building directly after they were fired and to laugh as they passed by, as to take credit for their firing,” it claims.
The seemingly childish lawsuits concludes with an order restraining the Devils’ president from “impugning Krezwick’s professional reputation and interfering in present and prosective contractual relationships.”
The short version? Richard Krezwick says that Lou Lamoriello didn’t like him. Krezwick feels Lamoriello bullied him out of $2.25 million, and he’s making a public show of wanting it back. This will undoubtedly go one of two ways: fade away from the public consciousness, or end with a settlement. If only we could all solve problems by throwing money around.
Erica Commisso
Latest posts by Erica Commisso (see all)
- Cammalleri Named Second Star, Hall Returns - December 1, 2016
- Hall Injured, Severson a Bright Spot Early Into Season - November 21, 2016
- Henrique’s Movember Returns, Devils Struggle to Find Chemistry - November 10, 2016
