After a report named Wayne Gretzky as part of an investment group attempting to bring an NHL franchise to Seattle, his agent said “The Great One” is not angling to bring hockey to the Emerald City.

The New York Post reported Gretzky’s involvement on Friday, saying that the league’s all-time leading scorer had joined a group of investors — one of three potential groups — to either secure an expansion franchise or move an existing team to the Pacific Northwest.

But Gretzky’s agent, Darren Blake, denied the Hall of Famer’s involvement to The Canadian Press just hours later.

“As you can imagine, prospective team owners from various franchises call frequently to gauge his interest in coming on board,” Blake said. “Seattle is no different.”

Gretzky, who racked up an NHL-record 894 goals and 1,963 assists in 21 seasons, has been part of an ownership bid before, having taken part in an unsuccessful attempt to buy Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment — which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors — for $1.5 billion in 2011.

Seattle, with a hockey history of its own and a ready-made rival less than 150 miles away in Vancouver, B.C., has been rumored to be a likely destination for the NHL.

In May, just weeks after saying Seattle wasn’t in a position to add a franchise due to the city’s impasse regarding a new basketball and hockey arena, commissioner Gary Bettman traveled to Seattle to meet with local officials to gather more information about the city’s “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) with hedge-fund manager and would-be-NBA-owner Chris Hanson.

The Seattle Times then named Los Angeles businessmen Victor Coleman and Jonathan Glazer as members of a prospective ownership group seeking to determine whether the MOU could be altered to allow an arena to be built once an NHL franchise had been secured. Under the current deal, publicly funding the construction of an arena is contingent upon a Seattle ownership group obtaining an NBA franchise.

Results of a March seattlepi.com poll (see below) showed that fans were overwhelmingly in support of bringing a hockey team to Seattle, which hasn’t had a top-tier franchise since the Seattle Metropolitans folded in 1924, seven years after they became the first American franchise to win the Stanley Cup.

[poll id=”56″]

Visit seattlepi.com for more World Cup news. Contact sports reporter Stephen Cohen at stephencohen@seattlepi.com or @scohenPI.