Just a week ago, we really weren’t sure about the future of Ottawa Senators’ ownership. The club is currently owned by Anna and Olivia Melnyk and no one knew if they planned to keep the team or not.
What a difference a week makes.
We now know the Ottawa Senators are indeed for sale and actor Ryan Reynolds, a former Vanier resident, is pretty clearly interested in buying them. On Monday night, Reynolds confirmed it in a conversation with host Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.
.@VancityReynolds addresses the rumors that he is interested in buying the @NHL @Senators. 👀 #FallonTonight pic.twitter.com/oMgaM08NXy
— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) November 8, 2022
If that weren’t enough, Reynolds then jumped on a plane to Ottawa to take in the Sens-Canucks game Tuesday night. The place went wild when he was introduced.
Even the Sens players gave the guy a standing ovation, including captain Brady Tkachuk, who’s now one degree of separation away from his favourite actor, Will Ferrell. Ferrell and Reynolds are good friends, and starring in a new Christmas movie this month.
Reynolds spent time growing up in Vanier and calls Vancouver his hometown, but his allegiance appeared to be squarely on Ottawa’s side last night. The actor watched the game from a suite with members of Inner Circle Sports LLC, who helped broker Reynolds’s purchase of a professional soccer club in Wales a couple of years ago. Reynolds was also spotted having serious looking discussions with Sens President of Business Operations Anthony LeBlanc and his vice president, former Sens’ defenceman Chris Phillips.
According to Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch, there’s no shortage of interest in the team right now.
The 46-year-old Deadpool star wouldn’t be the majority shareholder in any ownership scenario, but he would certainly be the face of it. And any of the apparently “countless” potential buyers would be crazy not to try and bring him into the mix. Everyone in North America knows who Ryan Reynolds is and almost everyone likes him. That would be a sharp, almost surreal contrast to where we were under previous ownership.
There’s a large component of any fan base that won’t support something that stops being fashionable. Despite their current slump, the Sens new decision makers did enough in the offseason to restore some of that “cool” factor.
If Ryan Reynolds becomes the next owner of this team, that would take things to a whole new level.
By Steve Warne
