Content area
Full Text
Winnipeg Jets owner Barry Shenkarow said Friday that his agreement to sell the National Hockey League team to a group headed by Medina businessman Richard Burke still stands, regardless of whether Burke receives public financing to buy the team.
Shenkarow said he's legally obligated to proceed with the sale under a tentative agreement reached last week with Burke and his partner, Steven Gluckstern, of Telluride, Colo.
But he added that the deal doesn't necessarily mean the team will move to Minnesota.
"Our deal with Burke and Gluckstern was not subject to them getting money from the Minnesota Legislature, not subject to them moving to Minnesota," the Jets owner said. "Our position is that if the team's not here {in Winnipeg}, we don't care where it goes."
However, Burke, in a telephone interview Friday, reiterated what he's said for the past week: he wants the Jets in Minnesota. And he said he expects the team to end up in the Twin Cities.
"I can't imagine that everybody involved in this won't do their part and won't make this happen," he said. "We're proceeding as if the team will be here. That has always been the intent."
Shenkarow reaffirmed his intention to sell the team to the Minnesota group 24 hours after a competing Winnipeg group failed to make an offer by midday Thursday, the deadline that had been set in the agreement with Burke.
"We did not receive yesterday {Thursday} either a bid or a phone call," he told a news conference at a downtown Winnipeg hotel.
Shenkarow said that he was contacted Friday by a lawyer representing the would-be Canadian buyers, and that he and Harvey Secter, a member of the Jets' board of directors, will review the communication. But he emphasized that the Winnipeg offer "is subject...