The once-popular Pocklington had a strained relationship with Edmontonians due in part to his decision to trade Wayne Gretzky as well as his other business and political dealings.
In 1997, the population of the Edmonton metropolitan area was still under one million, a figure viewed by many fans to be the minimum base a North American major sports team needs to be financially viable.
With the only other former World Hockey Association team in Hartford re-locating in 1997, many analysts predicted that the "domino effect" would be completed in 1998 with the Oilers' move.
While Alberta Premier Ralph Klein wanted to keep the Oilers in the capital, he was wary of a series of scandals involving favouritism at the ATB that had plagued his predecessor, Don Getty, in the 1980s.
Klein was unwilling to make any move that might have been perceived by voters as government subsidization of a hockey club that paid multimillion-dollar salaries.
However, when Klein's hometown Calgary Flames encountered financial difficulties in 2000, he immediately moved to assist them by creating a province-wide lottery.
With no single Albertan magnate willing to commit C$100 million to purchase the team, Nichols instead decided to secure smaller investments from a larger number of investors to make up the aggregate total.
The Edmonton City Council rejected these terms, believing they gave Alexander too much discretion to move the Oilers to Texas.
Although major sporting leagues generally frown upon large ownership groups controlling franchises, the NHL decided to forego putting a team in Houston and allow the Oilers' sale to EIG to proceed as they did not want to lose any more Canadian teams – this would have put their lucrative Canadian television contracts in jeopardy.
In the 2005–06 NHL season, the Oilers sold out every home game except one, where a computer glitch prevented the release of several hundred tickets.
[5] Before the January 21st meeting there were rumours of a rival or plan B offer led by Gary Gregg, Bill Butler, Brian Nilsson and Jakob Ambrosius.
These rumours were confirmed on January 23, as the rival faction would match the Katz offer either by soliciting new shareholders or taking a loan from Scotiabank using the hockey club as collateral.
Ron Hodgson, Neal Allen & Brian Hryniuk have resigned adding speculation that they may have accepted the Katz offer as well.