 Owner Peter Pocklington had explored moving the Oilers to Minnesota during the 1990s.In 1998, Pocklington almost made a deal to sell the team to Leslie Alexander, the owner of the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), who would have moved the team to Houston, Texas.On March 14, 1998, hours before the deadline to keep the team in Edmonton, the Edmonton Investors Group agreed to pay $70 million to buy the club.