George Gillett

Cough, please. It's hockey season.

Training camp begins with medicals tomorrow.

• Gillett passes the torch to the Molson family and their partners.

• The day in Laval.

• The language thing. Again.

• No captain? No problem.

• Price predicts good chemistry.

• Golf tournament gallery.

• From New Jersey and New York, via Four Habs Fans,  scouting reports on Brian Gionta  and Paul Mara.

• The Phoenix show continues.

• A Heatley deal that Bryan Murray is denying.

(Gazette photo by Pierre Obendrauf)

George Gillett and his much taller partner, Tom Hicks, have bought themselves 12 months of breathing room on their loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia.

Uncles George and Tom – or, as they're known in the pubs of Liverpool, "those Yank c%$#s" – still owe a huge whack of money and have to a) maybe find a deep-pocketed partner and b) figure out how to build a new stadium at Anfield.

From the Guardian:

When they bought Liverpool in 2007 for £174m assuming £44.8m in liabilities, Gillett promised not to load any debt on to the club. When it emerged that they had done so, and that plans to build a new stadium were being put on hold, there was anger from fans.

Learned colleague Pat Hickey reveals BMO has replaced bankrupt CIT in providing $225 million toward the Molson brothers' $550 million purchase of the Canadiens.

A few more yarns spun today on George Gillett's sale of the Canadiens to Geoff, Andrew and Justin Molson:

• Gillett wasn't the monster some feared: Stubbs
• Molson acquisition good news for fans: Todd
• Thank you, Uncle George: Boone (if you haven't seen it yet)

In French, at Cyberpresse:

• A rebirth of Canadiens-Quebec rivalry?
• Lafleur sees a more Francophone team
• Jacques Martin, the professor: Jean-François Bégin
• Price must be tougher mentally: Bégin

Sports Business Journal is reporting that an announcement of the sale of the Canadiens could come as early as this weekend, and that heavily leveraged team majority owner George Gillett could pocket between $506-$537 million for the sale of the team and its Bell Centre arena home.

He might also choose to sell only a minority share in the Canadiens, who will play host next weekend to the NHL Entry Draft.

He's still not gone on record as saying he's going to sell the Canadiens, but majority owner George Gillett is reported by the Journal de Montréal's QMI news agency to be very satisfied with both the process of having his hockey holdings evaluated by BMO, and by the offers he's received for the club and its Bell Centre home. This is apparently from BMO's Jacques Ménard, who's engineered the work to date.

Watched by team legend Guy Lafleur, George Gillett Jr. pulls on a Canadiens jersey on Jan. 31, 2001, the day he was announced as the majority owner of the Habs. One day soon, Gillett might be taking that jersey off.
Shaun Best, Reuters

Le Journal de Montréal reports today that interested groups – and it says there are six – have until the end of the day today to table their offers to buy the Canadiens and the Bell Centre.

The paper says that three American groups are interested in purchasing the club, along with three Canadian groups, the latter including Québecor, Molson family members, and a third Quebec group whose participants the story does not identify.

Once George Gillett has all the offers in hand, he can study them with financial experts and then wait for the bids to improve, like average folks do when they put a trinket on eBay. Except average folks often don't see the bidding for their stuff end in the hundreds of millions.

(If I were Uncle George, I'd have put the Habs and the Bell Centre on eBay, with a reserve of maybe $600 million, just to see who'd bid.)

A story in La Presse on the weekend revealed that George Gillett has borrowed $50 million against his ownership of the Canadiens.

Quoting unnamed sources, Jean-Sebastien Gagnon and Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot also wrote that the Bell Centre is mortgaged to the tune of $200 million.

If Gillett were to sell the hockey team and the building for $400 million, which is the most widely mooted sale price, his profit would be $150 million.

This may sound like a good chunk of change.

Bear in mind however, that Gillett's 50 per cent ownership of the Liverpool soccer club was financed by a loan of $350 million from the Bank of Scotland. And after swinging a six-month extension in January, Gillett is on the hook for that money in July.

Add to this the personal loan of $75 million he took out at 19 per cent interest (Uncle George could  have got a more favourable rate from José Theodore's father), and Gillett has liquidity issues that put your credit-card balance into perspective.

With all the talk swirling around Habs owner George Gillett and his purported interest/non-interest in selling the team, this story from Major League Baseball's web site adds some intrigue.

Gillett's equal partner in the Liverpool football club, Tom Hicks (who also owns most of baseball's Texas Rangers and the NHL's Dallas Stars), is looking to free up some capital.

The story is here: Hicks looking for investors

Meanwhile, Gillett wasn't a happy man at a sports conference in Denver yesterday, his personal financial business making worldwide headlines.

The owner of the Canadiens is 70 today.

What do you get for the man who has everything?

Well, Liverpool got George Gillett a Champions League draw.

How about Bob Gainey gets the boss a Top 4 defenceman

(Then there's this report in The Times of London that says Gillett and co-owner Tom Hicks are ready to sell the English soccer club.)

Sports Media Canada, the national organization that this year honours The Gazette's Dave Stubbs for his sportswriting, has named George N. Gillett Jr. Sports Executive of the Year.

Gillett bought the Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club and the Bell Centre in 2001. Among his other sports interests are ownership of the NASCAR team, Gillett Evernham Motorsports (GEM) and a 50% share of the Liverpool English Premier League Football Club. 

Sports Media Canada is the Canadian chapter of A.I.P.S. A.I.P.S. is the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive and has chapters in 130 countries, one of which is Canada.

George Gillett got a bargain when he bought the Canadiens, writes Gazette Sports Editor Stu Cowan.

The 2004-05 lockout might have been the best thing that ever happened to Gillett. After going a year without NHL hockey, Montreal fans were desperate for a fix, and the 21,273-seat Bell Centre has been sold out for every game since the beginning of the 2005-06 season.

And while some fans might complain about high prices at the Bell Centre, 21,273 keep buying tickets despite the fact every game is available on high-definition TV on RDS, which drew an incredible 587,000 viewers for last Tuesday's exhibition game against the Buffalo Sabres in Roberval. And the first exhibition game at the Bell Centre on Friday night against the Ottawa Senators was sold out, with fans paying full regular-season prices. It's called supply and demand.

• Carbo says the kids are alright. 

• Who's up? Who's down? François Gagnon thinks Kyle Chipchura helped himself last night and Pavel Valentenko didn't.

• Marc De Foy on a big night for the Latendresse brothers.