Gillett sells Montreal Canadiens to keep NASCAR team afloat

UPDATE George Gillett, Jr., sold the Montreal Canadiens for $500 million on Saturday, and it's a good thing because he needs the money to keep his NASCAR team going. Don't laugh. I didn't see him sell the race team to keep the Habs going, did you?

Gillett, the majority owner of Richard Petty Motorsports in partnership with the King, has seen his NASCAR Sprint Cup team flirt with insolvency several times since the beginning of the season.

Their manufacturing partner, Dodge/Chrysler, is in bankruptcy protection and whatever money they'd been promised to help run the team's cars (Kasey Kahne, A.J. Allmendinger, Reed Sorenson and Elliott Sadler, drivers) either hasn't materialized or turned out to be a lot less than expected.

Earlier this month, the team laid off nine people and the remaining employees all had to take a pay cut. And remember, there had already been substantial layoffs as the result of the winter-time merging of Petty's outfit with Gillett's previous team that he'd shared with Ray Evernham.

So the sale of the Canadiens coupled with Kahne's timely victory [By the grace of God, these things just happen in NASCAR] in the Toyota/SaveMart 250 at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., yesterday has given the team some breathing room. The fact that Allmendinger finished seventh and Sadler was 10th means three Petty-Gillett cars finished in the top 10 and that race yesterday really was a ka-ching! affair. [Thank God] Wheels.ca

06/21/09 George Gillett, co-owner of Richard Petty Motorsports, has agreed to sell his 80 percent interest in the Montreal Canadiens to three brothers of the Molson family, according to a team news release.

The sale of the team, the Gillett Entertainment Group and the Bell Centre is estimated to be at least $462 million U.S, according to a report on the Rue Frontenac Web site.

The National Hockey League would have to approve the sale. The sale is expected to close in late August.

“Our family has been very proud to be associated with the Montreal Canadiens over the past eight years," Gillett said.