{"id":907751,"date":"2026-09-24T10:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907751\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T10:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T10:46:10","slug":"former-canadiens-owner-george-gillett-jr-dead-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907751\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Canadiens owner George Gillett Jr. dead at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>George Gillett Jr., the former majority owner of the NHL&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/teams\/montreal-canadiens\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"montreal-canadiens\" data-league=\"nhl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a>, has died at 87.<\/p>\n<p>The Canadiens confirmed Gillett&#8217;s death in a release Thursday. A cause of death was not given.<\/p>\n<p>Gillett bought the Bell Centre (then Molson Centre) and a majority stake in the Canadiens for $275 million on Jan. 31, 2001, with the help of $140 million in loans from two banks and the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, the province&#8217;s pension fund manager.<\/p>\n<p>He owned the Original Six club until agreeing to sell the team and arena to the Molson family on June 20, 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The sale was approved by the NHL&#8217;s board of governors in December of that year.<\/p>\n<p>Gillett, along with fellow American Tom Hicks, also owned English soccer giant Liverpool FC from 2007 to 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Born on Oct. 22, 1938, in Racine, Wis., Gillett rose to prominence as the founder of Brook Creek Management Corp., a portfolio management firm.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On behalf of the entire Canadiens organization, I would like to extend my deepest condolences to George\u2019s family,&#8221; Canadiens owner, president and chief executive officer Geoff Molson said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;George immersed himself in the Montreal community and was appreciated by everyone in the organization. We sincerely appreciate his contributions to the Montreal Canadiens during his time as owner.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Gillett Jr., the former majority owner of the NHL&#8217;s Montreal Canadiens, has died at 87. The Canadiens&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-907751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}