NHL has met with Ryan Reynolds over bid to buy Ottawa Senators

The Ottawa Senators officially announced that the team was going up for sale on November 4th and since then there has been a lot of interest from over 20 groups, including one spearheaded by Ryan Reynolds, hoping to make the winning bid for one of the NHL's most profitable franchises. 

In a press release distributed earlier last month, a representative from the franchise stated that “a process has been initiated for the sale of the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club… A condition of any sale will be that the team remains in Ottawa.”

“This was a necessary and prudent step to connect with those deeply interested parties who can show us what their vision is for the future of the team," said team chairman Sheldon Plener in the statement.

The reason for the sale was due to the death of team owner Eugene Melnyk, who left the Senators to his two daughters, Anna and Olivia. 

News of the Senators' sale set the hockey world abuzz with rumors of potential buyers and backroom deals being made to secure funding. 

Billionaire Michael Andlauer has been proposed as an early favorite in the battle to buy the Senators. Andlauer is the current owner of the Ontario Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs and also has an ownership stake in the Montreal Canadiens.  

Andlauer isn’t the only Canadian billionaire interested in buying the Senators. Toronto brothers Jeffery and Micahel Kimel have expressed an interest in purchasing the team. The Kimels previously owned a minority stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins before the team was sold last year.

Andre Desmarais, a Montreal-based billionaire who had originally backed a bid to build Ottawa’s new area, is also a possible buyer. But the most interesting rumors are focused on Canada’s most popular actor, Ryan Reynolds. 

During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in November, Reynolds addressed the rumor about his interest in the franchise, citing that he would probably need financial help to make the purchase, but that he would very much like to be part of any ownership team.

“The Ottawa Senators are an NHL team and I am trying to do that,” Reynolds said when asked about buying the team by Fallon. “It’s very expensive so I need a partner with really deep pockets. It’s called a consortium when you form a group to buy an entity, and it’s such a fancy way of saying, I need a sugar mommy or sugar daddy.”

Humor aside, Reynolds' representatives reached out to National Hockey League (NHL) officials and Galatioto Sports Partners, a New York investment firm hired by the Melnyk daughters to handle the sale of the franchise. 

“I love Ottawa. I grew up in Vancouver, but I also grew up in Ottawa and I spent a long time in Vanier, which is a little town right outside Ottawa,” Reynolds said.

Normally such a sale would be a private affair. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has always avoided publicity around the sale of a franchise, but Reynolds' remarks have turned the sale into an international story. 

"He was quite articulate on the Tonight Show last night,”  Bettman said with good humor, “that he'd be very interested and he needs either a sugar mommy or a sugar daddy with a lot of money to help him."

"I think those were his exact words that I'm quoting. Listen, anything that engages the fan base, that brings a lot of attention to the franchise and the team is a plus. He's a very popular and well-respected person."

Since Reynolds' appearance on The Tonight Show, a lot has happened. Over 20 different groups have shown interest in purchasing the Senators according to Bruce Garrioch.

But what really caught media attention was a December 13th Tweet from TSN hockey reporter Chris Johnson claiming that Bettman had met with Reynolds about being part of the Senators' ownership group.

"Gary Bettman and Bill Daly recently met with Ryan Reynolds to discuss his interest in being part of the next #sens ownership group," Johnson Tweeted. 

The formal process to sell Senators has begun but it may be some time before we find out which group, if any, are successful in their bid to buy the lucrative franchise. 

Eugene Melnyk originally purchased the Senators in 2003 for $92 million when the franchise faced bankruptcy. Since then, Melnyk reversed the team's fortunes and turned them into one of the league's most profitable franchises.