Were the Tampa Bay Lightning once Yakuza affiliated? | Into Focus

Were the Tampa Bay Lightning once Yakuza affiliated? | Into Focus

This NHL story had everything. I know who started the rumors and uh the world is round. You know what I mean? The Japanese mob known collectively here as the Yakuza, a missing finger cutting off fingers at the joint. British juke and a shadowy owner who was an absolute ghost. Heard all sorts of rumors. He introduced me to a couple of Japanese fellows. Cash flow issues, the owner being arrested, money laundering. Before they laid the foundation for the NHL’s Sunb Belt strategy, the Tampa Bay Lightning were a fledgling group led by a pair of Hall of Fame brothers. It’s beginning of the dream right here. And behind the scenes, this new NHL franchise was mired in absolute chaos. Here it is, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Never could I have envisioned the roller coaster that it was going to be. So, let’s put the early days of the Tampa Bay Lightning and an absolutely bonkers rumor into focus. Our objective here is to investigate the aforementioned bonkers rumor where the Tampa Bay Lightning partially founded by money from the Yakuza, the Japanese mob. So, to answer the question, we need a brief history lesson. It’s 1990 and John Ziggler is slowly approaching the end of a productive 15-year term as NHL president. And Ziggler decides to aggressively expand the league. Here’s the shark attack, which at that point consists of 21 teams. It starts with the San Jose Sharks in 1991. In a shot, he scores. And from there, Ziggler sees an opportunity to dive head first into warm weather, non-traditional American markets. The expansion fee was $50 million. When it came down to it, Ottawa and Tampa Bay, led by Phil Espazito, were really the two groups that were fully prepared to pay the $50 million expansion fee. Phil Espazito was a Hall of Fame player who had recently served as coach and general manager of the New York Rangers. He was charismatic, well-liked, and respected all over the game. You think baseball is exciting? Forget it. Phil’s Hall of Fame brother, Tony Espazito, was also part of the group. So, they got a franchise. But when it came time to pay for it, that’s where things suddenly got interesting because after their original investors backed out at the last minute, they didn’t have anything close to $50 million. So, you’re thinking, geez, Phil and his group are really in trouble. Are they really going to be able to move forward? Espazito and the Lightning were desperate to find a new investor halfway around the world in Japan. These Japanese businessmen didn’t know a thing about hockey. They didn’t even speak English, but they had plenty of money. You end up with Japanese money. Well, it’s I wish every time I mention money, you start laughing. You start juggling. I wish I wish we ate a lot of raw fish and I drank a lot of saki. Phil joked that he was saying hockey. They thought he was saying saki and they said more more. The Japanese were involved, but only to a minor degree. Initially, Phil was looking anywhere and everywhere to find other investors. And ultimately, that’s where the Duke of Manchester came in. Oh, yeah. There’s a Duke involved. Meet Angus Charles Drogo Montigue, the 12th Duke of Manchester. I mean, what could be better than a British Duke pledging to raise $25 million for the Lightning? We had a press conference, introduced him, presented him with his Duke number one lightning jersey. Lo and behold, after the press conference, he he essentially disappeared. Uh, and there was no payment made and it really left us scrambling hockey. And if somebody get that, it could be my wife. Um, she owes me money. No, no. The Duke bolted. Turns out he didn’t have the money or any money really, especially after he went to prison for fraud a few years later. But Espazito and the Lightning still have their connections in Japan, who had already pledged to loan the team a small part of their expansion fee. So, Espazito and his team went back to Japan and asked for a much bigger infusion of cash. Espazito of the Tampa Bay Lightning also made good on his first installment and dismissed any rumors about the franchise having financial problems. I know who started the rumors and uh the world is round, you know what I mean? But we’ve got a franchise and that’s the bottom line, man. The cash came from a company called Kokusai Green whose primary business was high-end golf resorts. As pro sports franchises go, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s board of directors was pretty unconventional. And it wasn’t exactly puppy dogs and ice cream behind the scenes, either. There was great distrust among between the Japanese and Phil. I think Phil’s group sort of resented that these people knew nothing about hockey. But there is one important name that nobody mentioned in this entire process. Tekashi Okubo. He was the owner of Kokusai Green which also made him the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning. But he never came to Florida or met with Espazito or watched the team. He was essentially a ghost. He wasn’t even mentioned anywhere in the team’s media guide. Here’s where the rumors start. I I couldn’t tell you who who owned the team. All I knew was was the was the paycheck coming in at the end of the month. Oh, a big hit by Okay, it’s 1998. Kokasai Green is hemorrhaging money and actively looking to sell the team when Lester Mson, a writer for Sports Illustrated, published an article entitled Team Turmoil. Mson’s article leans heavily on the fact that Okubo is this shadowy figure who owns the team despite having never met anyone with the Lightning. More than once, the article references a lawsuit brought by Tampa Coliseum, Inc. who had partnered with the Lightning to build a new arena for the team. In that lawsuit, Okubo is described as a quote gangster. So, who the hell is Tekashi Okubo? The rumor that we had heard uh was that if he came to the US, he would be arrested because of ties to the organized crime syndicate over in Japan. Does Okubu even exist? Was was the rumor going on in Tampa? We did do a check with a contact at the Justice Department and they didn’t have anything bad to say about him. Didn’t strike me as being a bunch of mobsters. the Mson article. It was a bunch of allegations and speculation with not a lot of factual support. But in the digital age where any rumor can spread like wildfire, the chatter about Kokusai Green and Japanese organized crime just kept on going. That’s where I started doing some digging to see if there was any way to substantiate these rumors. and my investigation placed my attention squarely on Chris Phillips, a Kokusai Green employee who served as the team’s executive vice president and alternate governor. From what we gathered, Phillips was functionally bilingual and first got involved with Kokai Green while working at one of their resorts in Maui. Within a few years, this guy with no sports background was an executive for a pro sports franchise. I actually hired a private investigator to get as much information as I could about Phillips before sadly finding out he passed away a few years ago. Every indication was that Phillips was just a regular guy in an extraordinary situation. But there were a couple of things I found that did get my attention. For example, in August of 1995, Phillips was on his way home when he was shot in the arm during an early morning traffic dispute. And I truly believe it was a case of he just ended up in the wrong spot, wrong time, and it was a random thing. That’s fair. But we also heard that Phillips had a missing finger. Well, on the finger thing, the Yakuza are known as a a right of passage where they chop off the top digit of the little finger. Chris was not missing his little finger digit. He he was missing a I think might have been his index finger in a water skiing accident. That was a BS story, but they they threw that into the press a lot. Okay, there’s still nothing concrete tying anyone in Kokoai Green to Japanese organized crime, but my journalistic instincts kept me digging. That’s when I had a phone conversation with an individual who was never part of Lightning staff, but had worked for a company that worked with them. I can’t reveal their name, but he assured me that Kokusai Green was connected to the Yakuza. It’s easy to throw out allegations because there’s no strings attached and it’s up to others to prove or disprove, but I think the assessment that it was coming from other sources that quote had a dog in the hunt in a different way, they were nothing more than throwing uh throwing mud against the wall and hoping it might stick. When I told my sources that someone had mentioned this Yakuza connection off the record, they all knew exactly who I was referring to. In fact, everyone I spoke with, including Lester Mson, specifically mentioned either this person or his colleague from the same company as the likely source of the Yakuza rumor. And then when it came time to follow up with this source for an on thereord interview, they suddenly vanished. Based on that, it looks to me like someone may have had a working relationship with the Lightning that ended acrimoniously. So, this disgruntled former associate decided to try to burn the whole thing down. Sorry folks, I’m a sucker for hot gossip and I snooped all around on this one, but I’m just not buying it. The lightning will come. They’ve reached the top of the mountain. I actually think the most remarkable thing about this whole saga is how through all this drama and all this chaos, the Tampa Bay Lightning became a picture of stability, not just in hockey, but all of sports. They got a great team, a great culture, and a great building. And if you look outside that arena, you’ll find a statue of Phil Espazito. And you know what? He earned it. He cannot get enough credit for what he did. I mean, I would compare him to Rocky. I mean, he got bloodied. He got knocked down so many times that it would have been easy to stay on the carpet and say, “I’ve done all I can do. It’s not going to work.” He just he kept getting back up. [Music]

A missing finger, a British Duke, and a shadowy owner that was an absolute ghost. The beginnings of the Tampa Bay Lightning, led by the Esposito brothers, was anything but orthodox. Were they at one point unintentionally affiliated with the Japanese Yakuza? TSN takes this rumour Into Focus.