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Possible buyer on the table for Thrashers
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ATLANTA — Los Angeles-based filmmaker and Atlanta native Stephen Rollins says he is gathering information for a possible bid to buy the Atlanta Thrashers.

Rollins denied reports he already has made an offer for the team.

Rollins told The Associated Press on Wednesday in a telephone interview he has talked with Bruce Levenson, one of the team's owners.

He laughed when asked if his only interest would be as a majority owner.

"You better believe it," Rollins said. "I live, breath, eat, sleep hockey, especially Thrashers hockey."

Rollins, 39, is the head of Lightning Pictures who had his start as a writer, director and producer while growing up in Atlanta. He said he became a hockey fan after a player from the old NHL Atlanta Flames gave his mother a hockey stick "and said when I was big enough to play with it to give it to me. I started skating when I was about 6 or 7."

Rollins became a devoted fan of the minor league Atlanta Knights and said he took a lead role in a group which in 1996 gathered 35,000 signatures in support of the NHL awarding an expansion franchise to Atlanta. That franchise became the Thrashers.

He said he has remained a long-distance fan of the Thrashers. He said he wears his Thrashers jersey to work on game days.

"I would like to own a team and if it presented itself to be Atlanta I would be more than ecstatic because of my hometown and everything I went through to help try to bring a franchise there to begin with," Rollins said.

Owners of the Thrashers and NBA Atlanta Hawks have sought new investors for a year.

"We are currently talking to a number of people or groups who have expressed an interest in partial or significant stakes in one or both teams," Levenson said last week.

Levenson did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages Wednesday night.

"We are only allowed to talk to folks about buying the Atlanta Thrashers in Atlanta," Levenson said last week, adding that was the mandate from the NHL.

Rollins said he has been troubled by rumors the team could move to Canada. He said he would have a marketing plan to bring more fans to Philips Arena.

"I think if you get out into the community and start promoting the team and start having the hockey activities you once did, I really think this thing could be turned around," Rollins said.

"You could wake a sleeping giant very fast. That's my hope for the Atlanta franchise, no matter who's owning it."

Rollins did not put a timetable on his current process of "looking at the numbers."

"I can say that my interest is definitely there if the situation presents itself properly," he said. "If it does, if I could be a part of that, then nothing would make me happier. I find it hard to find anyone who wants to see the NHL and the Thrashers thrive in Atlanta more than myself."

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Thrashers headed to Canada after team's sale
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WINNIPEG, Manitoba — The wait is over for Winnipeg hockey fans.

For Atlanta, it means saying goodbye to another NHL team.

True North Sports and Entertainment scheduled a news conference Tuesday at Winnipeg's MTS Centre to make "a significant community announcement."

True North has been in negotiations with the owners of the Atlanta Thrashers to buy the NHL team and move it to Winnipeg. The deal is reportedly worth $170 million, which includes a $60 million relocation fee that would be split by the rest of the league.

Winnipeg has been without NHL hockey since the Jets moved to Phoenix in 1996. The Thrashers entered the league three years later as an expansion franchise, but ownership problems, a losing team and dwindling attendance doomed the club. The team ranked 28th out of 30 teams this year with an average attendance of less than 14,000.

Assuming the deal goes through - it still must be approved by the other owners - Atlanta would become the first city in the NHL's modern era to lose two teams.
The Flames moved to Calgary in 1980 after eight seasons in Atlanta.

True North was making its announcement one day before the start of the Stanley Cup final, which begins Wednesday in Vancouver between the Canucks and the Boston Bruins.
While there was no prohibition on announcing major news during that series, the league preferred to get the Thrashers' sale off its plate before opening its signature event.

For weeks, the two sides had been working through complex legal details on the sale and relocation of the team, while leaving open the possibility that a local buyer would emerge late in the process. No one ever came forward with a serious offer, according to the Thrashers' ownership group, Atlanta Spirit, and the city's mayor, Kasim Reed.

"It is going to hurt the city but we will withstand it just fine and we will get through it," Reed said.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said on his weekly radio show that the inability to find an owner who wanted to keep the team in Atlanta was a barrier the league couldn't overcome.

"It would be one of those head scratchers where you say, 'Look at all of this great corporate opportunity, look at all of this grass roots hockey, why doesn't somebody want to own a team here?'" Bettman said. "And that would be a difficult, but unfortunate, situation to be dealing with if it has reached, or does reach, that point."

Bettman was asked if Atlanta had hopes of landing another NHL team if it lost its second franchise.

"The prospect of leaving Atlanta isn't something that I'm particularly fond of," he said. "So I can't even contemplate the notion of what would happen after that in terms of coming back. We respect the importance of Atlanta as a city. It's a big market, but this is a franchise that's got a problem in that market."

Team president Don Waddell says there remains some hope for a late development until a sale is made official and approved by the NHL board of governors, which is scheduled to meet June 21 in New York. But considering Atlanta Spirit, which also owns the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the operating rights to Philips Arena, has been trying for years to sell the hockey team, that seems highly unlikely.

Also, any potential owner would have to agree to become a tenant at Philips Arena, a major stumbling block because it would cut into potential revenue from sources such as concessions, parking, luxury suites and other events.

"Ownership still is committed to selling at a greatly reduced price to anyone committed to Atlanta," Waddell said.