Davin ‘Dave’ Olsen, who managed PNC Arena for the Hurricanes for 20 years, has died
.JPEG "PNC Arena VP & GM Davin Olsen talks with members of the Raleigh Police Department outside the arena to check the flow of traffic into the arena’s parking lots, prior to a Neil Diamond concert in March 2002. Olsen died suddenly on Monday, Jan. 31, 2022.")
Just before what is now called PNC Arena opened in 1999, narrowly obtaining its certificate of occupancy at the 11th hour, arena general manager Davin “Dave” Olsen celebrated by doing his dance version of the “Funky Chicken” in a darkened parking lot.
Olsen, who went on to manage the building for another 20-plus years as the executive vice president and general manager of PNC Arena for Gale Force Sports & Entertainment, has died after a heart attack. Olsen was 62.
Olsen had been with the Carolina Hurricanes franchise and overseen the operations of the arena since it opened in October 1999 before leaving the organization late in the summer of 2021.
Jeff Merritt has been executive director of the Centennial Authority, the arena landlord, since 2011 and worked closely with Olsen on arena issues. Merritt was emotional Monday in talking about someone he called a close friend.
“There are very few arenas who had a guy like Dave, who was known throughout the community,” Merritt said. “Dave knew everybody. Just to watch him on an event night was like watching a star performer, or the coach of the hockey team or basketball team. He couldn’t do anything without anyone stopping him or smiling at him.”
Merritt noted that Olsen would always take his “perch” at Canes hockey games by the glass behind the net on the north end of the arena. Merritt said Olsen said he would stand there so he could keep an eye on everything and so everyone would know where to find him if they needed him.
“But I think I lot of that was Dave was a kid on Christmas morning every time,” Merritt said. “To be that close to the National Hockey League, I think he never got past that ‘I can’t believe they pay me to do this’ kind of thing.”
Merritt said there were times at games that families were allowed would bring their young kids down by the ice in the third period. Olsen wore a 2006 Stanley Cup championship ring -- he also has his named engraved on the Cup -- and would let the kids hold it and wear it, he said.
“To me that sums up who Dave was,” Merritt said. “To see the delight on the faces of the kids and their parents was something else.”
Former Hurricanes president and general manager Jim Rutherford said he was stunned Monday when he heard of Olsen’s passing. While he worked closely with Olsen, the two were good friends.
“He was a big part of the arena, now only when it was being built but in working with the authority,” said Rutherford, now president of hockey operations for the Vancouver Canucks. “He could work with anybody. He was always willing to help people. He was really good at his job and really laid the foundation for how PNC Arena operated. He did so many good things there. This is really tough to talk about.”
Tom McCormick, a Centennial Authority member and former authority chairman, said Monday that Olsen was a “tough building manager.”
“He was a good building manager, but in that business you have to deal with promoters and performers, with a lot of egos involved,” McCormick said. “And Dave was very firm and fair in dealing with folks.”
Olsen was fond of showing off the arena to newcomers, McCormick said, giving them the tour.
“Whenever anybody would come to visit the building for the first time, whether it was for a game or out-of-town arena people coming in, their first comment was ‘This building is so clean, we can’t believe it’s as old as it is,’” McCormick said. “That was Dave. He was very diligent about that and very focused on how the building looked.
“We’ll miss him. The best you can say of anybody is he was very good at what he did.”
Before coming to North Carolina, Olsen had administered the New Haven Coliseum and Hartford Civic Center in Connecticut. He then was director of recreational facilities at UNC Charlotte before joining the Hurricanes.
One story often told about Olsen was about the opening of the arena and the last-moment granting of the building’s certificate of occupancy, allowing it to open to the public.
“There was no opportunity for a soft opening,” Olsen said in a 2019 N&O interview. “We basically got thrown to the wolves in our first event.”
Olsen spent 70 straight hours in the building in the final preparations. So happy to have everything completed, he said he did the “Funky Chicken,” which he said was taught to him by his mother
Rutherford said he recently had dinner with Olsen and that Olsen was “looking forward to getting a new job.” He said Olsen told him he would soon be working on a project in Texas.
The Carolina Hurricanes, in a statement Monday, said: “”We are shocked and saddened to learn of Dave’s passing. Dave was an enormous part of this organization from the construction of PNC Arena through nearly 22 years of operating and maintaining it as one of the premier entertainment venues in the Southeast. He was a dedicated, popular employee who will be dearly missed by so many of our employees, past and present.”
Olsen is survived by his wife, Marci, and two children, sons Davin and Jason.
A public memorial service will be held for Olsen on Friday, Feb. 11, at 11 a.m., at Raleigh’s Memorial Auditorium.
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 2:51 PM.
