Daniel Negreanu has made a fortune playing Poker and he plans to put some of that money towards buying a portion of Bill Foley’s Las Vegas NHL franchise.
Of course, that franchise doesn’t exist yet and while the league plans to focus exclusively on bids from Foley and Quebecor (Quebec City), there’s no guarantee that the NHL will expand at all in the near future. Still, Negreanu would put the odds of Las Vegas being granted a team -- which he thinks should be called the Rat Pack -- at 99.9%.
“I just don’t see it not happening,” he told the Toronto Sun. “We have a solid owner, an arena (nearing completion on the Strip with 17,500 seats for hockey) and we sold 13,000 season tickets.
“Vegas has 2.2 million people. It’s a sports town. We’ve been starving for a professional franchise of any kind for many years.”
Negreanu added that in addition to owning a stake in the franchise, he has interest in having a hockey talk show.
If Las Vegas gets a team, it’s possible that will begin play as early as 2016-17.