TAMPA, Fla. — It was a Christmas pop concert that changed Jeff Vinik’s life and, eventually, the fortunes of the Tampa Bay Lightning.



Vinik, 60, was with his family at a show in Boston one December night in 2008 when he took a stroll along the concourse with a good friend of his while sipping a glass of wine. By then, Vinik had made a fortune in his hedge-fund business, amassing the kind of wealth that would last multiple generations.



“‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?'” Vinik remembers asking his buddy, Mark. “I didn’t like playing golf. I said, ‘I’m going to buy a hockey team.'”



The next day, Vinik googled “How to buy a pro sports team,” and found some prescient (and perhaps obvious) advice: “It was, ‘Be rich and know people,'” Vinik says now, laughing.



What followed were months of research and twists and turns before Vinik eventually bought the...