Minnesota Wild co-owner Phil Falcone might quit his hockey-crazed home state to make a play for the New York Islanders, The Post has learned.
The beleaguered hedge fund mogul and former Harvard hockey player has been mulling selling his minority ownership in the Wild with the goal of becoming an eventual owner of the Islanders, sources said.
If that happens, Falcone would invest in the Islanders alongside friend and fellow Harvard alum Jon Ledecky, who last month led an investor group that purchased a “substantial” minority stake in the NHL franchise, sources said.
“[Falcone] is thinking about it,” said a source familiar with the situation.
Falcone did not return calls seeking comment.
The current deal with Islanders owner Charles Wang calls for him to transfer majority ownership to Ledecky and London financier Scott Malkin after two years.
That’s after the Islanders will play their last game at the antiquated Nassau Coliseum and move to Brooklyn’s newer Barclays Center for the 2015-16 season.
Ledecky’s group is buying only a 10 percent stake in the Islanders, and will need to line up additional funding or investors to buy out Wang, according to sources.
An Islanders spokesman said neither the team nor Ledecky would comment on the deal, which requires the approval of the NHL board of governors.
Meanwhile, Falcone, who owns 45 percent of the Wild, is at odds with co-owner Craig Leipold. The two have clashed, in part, over how to cover the team’s roughly $20 million annual loss.
Falcone, a native of Minnesota’s Iron Range mining region, went to only a few Wild home games last season, sources said.
The two bought the franchise for $225 million in 2008, with Leipold taking the role of principal owner. Leipold is the husband of billionaire Helen Johnson-Leipold of the SC Johnson & Co. fortune.
There is a clause in the Wild ownership contract that allows Falcone to buy out Leipold at the end of this season, but an ownership swap is more attractive to Falcone, a source said.
Before he can quit the Wild, however, he has to tame some of this business troubles.
Falcone is waging battles on two fronts involving his investment in LightSquared, a wireless startup in bankruptcy, and the fallout from his settlement last year with the
Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Securities and Exchange Commission deal to resolve charges of market manipulation bars Falcone’s Harbinger Capital hedge fund from raising any new capital while requiring him to meet investors’ redemption requests.
Last week, Harbinger filed a new LightSquared restructuring plan that would allow Falcone to control a smaller slice of the company, and a bankruptcy confirmation hearing could be coming in mid-October to bring the situation to a conclusion.
“If everything worked from a financial perspective, he could be very interested,” said a source familiar with his thinking.