Oren Koules to take lead in ownership race

The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Oren Koules, with real estate investor Jeff Greene is making a push to buy out Len Barrie. Bill Daly confirms that Jeff Greene has filed a league ownership application with the NHL. Green says that he has "the funds available to do this transaction".

Len Barrie has apparently been in talks with a St. Louis real estate developer named Anthony Sansone, but Sansone has not yet filed an ownership application.

Elliotte Friedman and Erik Erlendsson are both reporting that Len Barrie's window to buy out Koules has now closed. The best line out of Erlendsson's article is that "Apparently, nobody informed Barrie.", which actually seems very fitting with the Tampa Bay management saga. Barrie apparently thought he had until Wednesday to buy out Koules.

When informed later Monday of the league's confirmation he was out of the picture, Barrie responded in a text message to The Tampa Tribune: "We'll see. I guess I would be happy to get my $40 million."-TBO.com

Awesome. He sounds unmoved by the fact that he missed the deadline. But I guess I would be happy to get back my $40 million too if I thought I had lost it all. $40 million is better than no million. Maybe Barrie planned it this way, sounding like he was interested in buying out Koules long enough to get some other investor interested just so he can re-coup his money to get out of this money sucking black hole investment. If he did, genius.