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Among the art and artifacts being fought over in the Peter Pocklington court battle are five Stanley Cup rings that date to his time as owner of the champion Edmonton Oilers.

Mr. Pocklington's commemorative rings have caught the attention of Robert Whitmore, the trustee in the former hockey team owner's personal bankruptcy filing in California under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Last fall, Mr. Whitmore took a close look at how Mr. Pocklington filled out his Chapter 7 forms in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The trustee noticed that “numerous memorabilia, trophies and pictures” were valued at $500 (U.S.). Something seemed to be amiss. Individuals who submit voluntary bankruptcy papers are supposed to disclose recent sales proceeds and list their various assets in full. Mr. Pocklington, as it turned out, had put up five Stanley Cup rings and 24 other sports items for sale in June on a Montreal-based sports memorabilia website, www.classicauctions.net.

Six of the lesser-known items, including a CCM Wayne Gretzky prototype jersey and miniature Stanley Cup, fetched $22,338. The sales were not disclosed in Mr. Pocklington's bankruptcy filing.

The Stanley Cup rings, won between 1984 and 1990, garnered “winning bids” that totalled $272,829. There appeared to be keen interest in the rings from one bidder in Western Canada. But the June ring sales were never consummated, court filings show.

The bankruptcy trustee is now trying to recover money from Mr. Pocklington and potentially seize whatever is still in his possession, notably the five Stanley Cup rings. Mr. Pocklington, who insists that the rings aren't his property, said he was trying to raise money for his grandchildren's education by attempting to sell the rings. “All these memorabilia were transferred to my wife in 1998. She has owned them since then, and they were for the benefit of my grandchildren's educational trust,” he said in an interview.

California entrepreneur Donald Courtney discovered that the winning bidder in June got cold feet after learning that Mr. Pocklington had already sold a set of five Stanley Cup rings in 2001. Mr. Pocklington's lawyer, Michael Lusby, explains that the rings sold in 2001 were a separate set that his client had originally given to his now-deceased father, Basil Pocklington. “I don't see why it would really change the value, if there were two sets or one,” Mr. Lusby says. “The buyer wanted a unique set. He thought he was buying the only set. Peter told the truth” about the existence of the earlier set of rings.

Mr. Courtney, a friend of one of the plaintiffs challenging Mr. Pocklington, has asked Classic Auctions to provide documentation to prove the authenticity of the remaining five rings. He wants to check the diamond quality of each of the rings, because former Oilers captain Wayne Gretzky said in an autobiography that Mr. Pocklington varied the size of diamonds based on how he ranked contributions to the team's first Cup victory in 1984. “Here we'd spent the last five years trying to bang through everybody's skull that we were a team, that nobody is more important than anybody else. And then Peter goes and ranks us all by carat,” Mr. Gretzky said in the book.

Even after Mr. Pocklington sold Mr. Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, the hockey superstar commanded adoration in Edmonton. In 1989, a life-sized bronze statute of Mr. Gretzky was unveiled outside the Oilers' home arena. Mr. Lusby submits that with the benefit of hindsight, the trade was good for the centre in the long run. “If anything, it probably improved Gretzky's brand,” Mr. Lusby says.