FanHouse Craig Leipold

A crucial offseason, possibly the most significant in franchise history, is underway for the Minnesota Wild. Head coach Jacques Lemaire and general manager Doug Risebrough, the only people to ever hold those positions for the Wild, are both gone.

The process of finding a new general manager took precedent for owner Craig Leipold, and he made sure to take his time and get things right. After a series of interviews, and a list of candidates that included high-profile broadcaster Pierre McGuire, Leipold has settled on a front-office veteran with a track record of helping build winning teams.

When the Minnesota Wild fired longtime general manager Doug Risebrough April 16, it was obvious that the team was about to embark on the most significant offseason in its almost decade-long history. Relatively new owner Craig Leipold made it clear that the standard of mediocrity on the ice was not going to be allowed to stand.

In searching for a new person to lead the franchise, Leipold appears to have reached out to a great variance of candidates. The list of finalists reported by Michael Russo of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is quite intriguing, as is word of a Tuesday interview with one of the candidates.

In 2000, I had a chance to interview Doug Risebrough on a radio show I hosted in Duluth, Minn. It was an interesting conversation, and it was a bit of an education. Frankly, I didn't know a lot about hockey then, and I certainly didn't know a thing about building an expansion franchise from the ground up.

Nearly nine years later, Risebrough finds himself unemployed, fired as Minnesota Wild president and general manager by club owner Craig Leipold. While I was shocked by the move, it was one that I knew needed to happen. Given multiple chances at redemption, Risebrough could only destroy his chance of returning.

Earlier this week, I took another look at the transaction that allowed William "Boots" Del Baggio to acquire a minority stake in the Nashville Predators. The next step in unwinding Del Baggio's stake in the Predators will take place in a San Francisco court later today, as Del Baggio's creditors stake their claim to his remaining assets in order to settle his debts in a bankruptcy proceeding.

To recap, the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold, then owner of the Predators, loaned Del Baggio the money to purchase the minority stake in the team. AEG floated Del Baggio $7.3 million while Leipold loaned him $10 million.

Apparently, AEG and Leipold have already determined how to split $2.3 million from a Del Baggio bank account and believe that they should have first crack at Del Baggio's stake in the Predators, which is reportedly worth $35 million.

Yesterday, Forbes put together yet another list that they know readers love, in this case, the top 10 sports franchises most likely to move. The NHL and the NFL tied for most teams on the list, each with three, while Major League Baseball and the NBA both placed two teams on the list.

The candidates from the NHL aren't much of a surprise. The New York Islanders, Phoenix Coyotes and Nashville Predators all made the list, and their problems are more or less familiar to folks who follow the game closely. On Long Island, a team that hasn't won a playoff round in 15 years struggles on with an aging building; in Phoenix, a Canadian refugee is struggling financially in a non-traditional market; while Nashville is just looking for a reliable owner.

But for all of Forbes well-deserved reputation for solid reporting, they are not above getting it wrong sometimes. Here's the Nashville capsule:

Predators ownership went into the season armed with a contract clause with the Nashville officials stipulating they could leave town if the team didn't draw at least 14,000 fans per game to the city-owned Sommet Center. They wound up at just over 14,900 per game. No word on whether owner Craig Leipold tried to channel Rachel Phelps (character who played the Cleveland Indians owner in Major League) in an attempt to sabotage attendance.

Last time I checked, Leipold was the former owner of the Predators, having sold the team and been approved as the new owner of the Minnesota Wild.

I have another idea for Forbes: how about a feature on the top 10 sports franchises likely to disappear in the event of a violent economic contraction? You may even get a chance to see your predictions come true in the short term!

See what I did there with the rhyming? Isn't that neat? No. No it's not. But what is neat is to see is a guy with a passion and love for hockey getting put in charge of one of the best hockey towns in the NHL. It's no secret that the folks up in Minnesota really care about hockey. During the year-long saga of Craig Leipold's sale of the Nashville Predators, he made it clear again and again that it was about the money. We heard the old line, that if there was anything that could be done to keep the Predators under his watch, he would have done it, but was out of options.

Today, Leipold sort of proved those statements were true by buying into what is arguably the most successful expansion franchise of Gary Bettman's tenure. A report straight from the horse's mouth, the Minnesota Wild's official website, announces the sale of the Wild to Leipold. The Wild have been owned and operated by Minnesota Sports and Entertainment (MSE), which is not to be confused with the folks who own the Maple Leafs (MLSE). Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but pending league approval, Leipold looks to be back in the fold as an NHL owner.

In an official release on the Wild's website, Leipold had the following to say ...

"[Local owners] open doors to get businesses involved. We don't have that. We need some local owners."
-- Craig Leipold to The Tennessean, Jan. 2007

Did I mess the memo where San Jose, Calif. became an unofficial suburb of Nashville? Because the newest member of the "local" ownership group battling a deadline to keep the Predators in town is Doug Bergeron, chairman and CEO of VeriFone, which is an electronic payment technology company based in San Jose. He joins a group that isn't talking to the media this afternoon, on the last day it has exclusive negotiating rights with the team. John Glennon of The Tennessean has been outstanding on this story for months, and has news about Bergeron today from another "local" owner, "Boots" Del Biaggio:

Del Biaggio said the addition of Bergeron, a Windsor, Canada native, was not an effort to boost the $193 million bid of the group, noting that it will remain the same. "We just think this is a great opportunity to bring in a really powerful guy," Del Biaggio said. "I think it's very important to the fans and to the NHL that they can see we have a really powerful group. It's a mix of having great Nashville investors and what I think are incredible businessmen and hockey fans that happen to be on the West Coast."

"Hockey fans that happen to be on the West Coast," and a Nashville-based ownership group that is absolutely incapable of sealing this deal without them. Referring to this collective as "local" going forward would be a farce. More on a potential extension from the Nashville Post here.

So if this deal falls apart -- and there is still very viable hope that it will not -- there will still be whispers about an escape to Kansas City, especially with the Predators failing thus far to hit that attendance target of 14,000 per game. Ordered Chaos of On Frozen Blog has a solid look at how far the city has come since the hapless days of the KC Scouts:

But the Kansas City of the 1970s bears little resemblance to the Kansas City of today. The KC metro area now ranks as the 27th-largest in the country - larger than San Jose or Columbus, and just a few snowed-in romantic nights by the fireplace away from catching metro areas like Portland/Vancouver, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Its burgeoning population follows a strong upsurge of both urban expansion and cultural growth.

Completing our Nashville coverage for the day: Mike and Jason on The KB, offering "Five Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About The Nashville Predators." Did you know the Predators lead the league in players whose names start with "J"?