Another week, another update on the never-ending story that is the sale of your Dallas Stars.
I think we're all ready for this saga to be over, and according to Reuters, the process could take a giant step forward as soon as Wednesday. According to writer Tom Hals' sources, the team, creditors and prospective owner Tom Gaglardi are finalizing papers and waiting for one final step - the creditors to officially approve Gaglardi's bid, which the story reports to be around $230 million.
Creditors have until Tuesday to vote, although they are expected to approve the plan.
If no other bids emerge, the team's lenders would suffer a loss, the two sources said. Gaglardi is assuming the team's unsecured liabilities, such money owed to suppliers and obligations for deferred pay, the sources said
The other quote I found interesting was this one:
However, other interested buyers for the team, which has been on the block for more than two years, are considered unlikely, and the team could be out of bankruptcy in less than 60 days, the sources said.
Now, that directly contradicts some things we've heard, particularly from Chuck Greenberg as recently as last week. And the article doesn't detail why the sources believe there won't be interest from him, Billy Quinn or anybody else we've heard through the rumor mill in the past several months.
Reuters is generally a very reliable outlet. In media terms, they're a wire service comparable to the Associated Press, so I'm inclined to give the author the benefit of the doubt that multiple people are telling him these things. But I'm also taking it with a big grain of salt because people who seem to be much more tied into the sources surrounding the sale, be that business magazines or the hockey media, have nothing on this so far.
So should you get excited yet? I personally am approaching this with cautious optimism that the process will finally start chugging through the court system very soon, even if it's not Wednesday. And when that happens, whenever that is, it will finally be the beginning of the end for this long, incredibly painful process that began when Tom Hicks' sports empire started to collapse.
After the jump, Brenden Morrow gives his thoughts on the upcoming season, Jamie Oleksiak talks chirping and Jonathan Toews creams a little kid.
- Brenden Morrow talks the upcoming season with Kevin Allen of USA Today. I find the way he talks about Benn interesting because, as much as we all love him, he's still not quite a household name among the national hockey media. Let's hope that changes this season, shall we? [USA Today]
- Jamie Oleksiak has made a big (pun so very intended) impression at the Traverse City tournament. [ESPN Dallas]
- Speaking of the Stars newest giant, what do a bunch of teens and 20-somethings do when given a day off from a prospect tournament? Go-kart and mini-golf, apparently. Oleksiak weighs in on the drubbing by the New York Rangers prospects and talks about the intra-country rivalry between him and Jack Campbell. [NHL.com]
- Scouting the enemy: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch gives you a dry look at how the baby St. Louis Blues, who will play the Stars prospects at 2:30 p.m. today, beat the baby Hurricanes 2-1. It ain't much, but at least it gives you some names to look for. [StlToday.com]
- The season-opening home-and-home with the Chicago Blackhawks may have just gotten a little bit easier. Patrick Sharp, the Hawks leading goal-scorer from last season, underwent an emergency appendectomy on Monday. The team said he is expected to be out 3-4 weeks, which would bump up against those first two games, and it really does vary with this surgery. Steve Ott missed about a month when the same surgery sidelined him around the Olympic Break in 2010. [Chicago Blackhawks]
- Sad news greeted the hockey world again Monday morning as it was announced that Alexander Galimov, the only player to survive the crash of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team plane, had died of his injuries. Flight engineer Alexaner Sizov is expected to recover. The investigation into precisely why the plane went down is underway with many possible problems with the mechanics of the plane already being ruled out. [New York Times]
- The New Jersey Devils joined the Stars, St. Louis Blues and Phoenix Coyotes in a very public ownership issue on Monday when the New York Post, home of some of the greatest headlines this side of the Atlantic Ocean though this one isn't that special, wrote a story indicating the team had missed a loan payment and might have to file for bankruptcy. The Devils have refuted the story. [New York Post/National Post]
- Jonathan Toews' clinic with youngsters in Canada included all the usual drills as well as a few, well, unintentional lessons about keeping one's head on a swivel. Hey, he's just getting these youngsters ready for full-check hockey. [Puck Daddy]