Gary Bettman is a knob

When the NHL puts out a statement describing Jim Balsillie's latest stab at the windmill as a "sham," we should probably listen. This is a league that sold a franchise to a guy named "Boots." The NHL knows all about sham owners. They know what they are talking about.

Easy Dirty Ugly Dirty Money

I am always always happy when people start talking about a theoretical second Toronto team. As I see it, it makes sense, it makes a lot of sense and the only people in the NHL who disagree with that are the guys in charge of doling out the franchises. The NHL has its own plans for relocation but they don't involve Canada. It's an open secret that the Hockey Establishment wants a team in Kansas City, for all their secret and probably nefarious reasons. If anything has given me joy over the last few months (and it hasn't been the Leafs) it's been watching the NHL stumble around, caught with its pants down over its involvement with William "Boots" del Baggio and the sale of the Nashville Predators.

Have you been following this? I hope so because it is a good story. I hope so because this gets dirty. I hope so because this is the kind of stuff people lose important high up hockey jobs over. Maybe this story is familiar to you. You remember Jim Balsillie and his attempted takeover of said Predators and you remember Gary Bettman's ham fisted refusal of all that good Canadian money. He didn't want Balsillie's money because Ballsy was going to uproot the team and take it to Hamilton, Ontario and Hamilton, Ontario is not a city where any self respecting hockey franchise would find itself out past dark.

So the NHL turns down Balsillie and his guaranteed millions and instead turn to Boots del Baggio because Boots is buddy buddy with the hockeystocracy and Boots understands that the correct place to put an uprooted hockey franchise is not in Canada, where they probably already have enough hockey anyway, but in Kansas City where it is well known that local hockey fans have been in steep withdrawal-like symptoms since 1976, the year the Kansas City Scouts up rooted and headed for the snowier slopes of Colorado. (The Kansas City Scouts would be a pretty good name for a team if it was supposed to be parsed "the Kansas City Scouts," you know?). A hockey team in the KC is in line with NHL thinking and though Boots can't scrounge up quite as much buillion as certain Canadian billionaires, he gets the coveted Nashville stake.

This seems so obvious in retrospect, I'm sure the NHL is now realizing, but selling shares of their business to a man nicknamed "Boots" was a Bad idea (what are boots made for?). There is a new sports arena in Kansas City, built specially to attract any misplaced major league sports teams that might wander by and you maybe already know who owns that new arena. It's owned by Phil Anchutz, who also owns the LA Kings and probably a bazillion other things. So Anschutz owns an empty stadium in Kansas City. This story is great and it keeps getting better. This is the kind of Woodward and Bernstein stuff makes me want to enroll into j-school right now.

You will or will not be surprised to learn that a man named "Boots" did not actually have enough money to buy his own hockey franchise. And by "enough", I should say "any". But gosh darn it this is America pre-credit crisis and there is always someone willing to give an enterprising entrepreneur with a questionable nickname a line of credit. In this case it was our friend Anschutz who stepped up to the plate, along with buddy Craig Leipold, owner of the Minnesota Wild, both of whom have probably played more than a few rounds of golf with Gary Bettman, if you catch my drift. Now we have two NHL owners lending money to a third soon-to-be-owner. And that third owner is one or two bad season in Nashville away from flipping the team into another city, into a building owned by his creditors.

Business as usual until Boots del Baggio's con man act runs dry and he files for bankruptcy and we find out's he's in the hole for almost $60 million dollars. This wouldn't be so bad if Bettman's NHL didn't already have a track record of selling franchises to insolvent fraudsters and if the other guy offering to buy the Predators hadn't been so obviously a better choice.

This is all of course, I hasten to mention, all pure SPECULATION and should be treated as such as it's all before the courts as we speak. Boots is up on fraud charges plus a messy bankruptcy. If you want to read more, keep your eye on your local drugstore's literature section under legal thrillers, if you know what I mean.

It's also interesting to note that because Boots' creditors include two NHL owners in Anschutz and Leipold, those two may now theoretically own part of the Nashville Predators, which would obviously go against NHL bylaws. One more thing to think about.

I hope this gets ugly. This might have heavy fallout on Gary Bettman. This might cost Bettman his job. This might be the best worst mistake the NHL ever made.

Hockey Scribbles

- Mats Sundin is back for another year. All is right with the world.

- Next year one of Danny Briere, Chris Drury, Scott Gomez, Ryan Smyth or Scott Hartnell will be a Leaf, fer sure.

- Micheal Landsberg asked Fergie if he would consider signing newly freed agent Alexei Yashin. Worryingly, the Leafs' GM did not immediately say "No way in hell".

- Sidney Crosby is only a year older than me. This will never ever cease to amaze me.

- Nashville won't have the Preds much longer. Hamilton might very soon. This worries me, not only because the Leafs would have to play this very talented team at least eight times a year, and really having to play against the Sens that much is bad enough already, but seriously, Hamilton? Canada's half-hearted answer to Pittsburgh? Moving them to wilds of Kitchener is even worse, mainly because the Kitcheloo Blackberries is a name too ridiculous to talk about. Move them to the 905, I could live with that. Call them the Toronto Toros or whatever and give the rich refugees in Toronto's sprawl something to cheer for. Toronto needs another team, is what I'm saying. Sympathies to Nashville fans, who have a legitimately good team on their hands but none of the ties that kept the Penguins grounded in Pittsburgh.

- Mike Keenan is a coach again. What? Insert joke about NHL coaching jobs being like a game of musical chairs but when the music stops, nobody takes away a chair. Or even better, insert joke comparing Keenan to promiscuous girl at college frat party. Everybody gets a turn. More confusing is that it's Calagry that has dipped into the communal coach pool, a team that is good enough that they shouldn't have to make such desperate looking moves.

- Keenan's mustache is also kinda creepy, in a pedophile kinda way.

- Back to the Leafs. Here's the problem. I want the Leafs to make the playoffs because that is something they haven't done in too long now, but on the other hand, the only way Fergie will ever get fired is if the Leafs tank the season. So... make the playoffs and curse ourselves to another five years of ineffective weak-kneed GMing, or take a deep breath and hope for the worst on the ice in order to ensure the best in the boardroom.

Lates peeps,

Jason

Get A Room You Two, Nobody Wants To See That

Do you remember, when you were younger, and your girlfriend, the one you were with for something just slightly less than forever (yeah, her) broke up with you, and left your heart in two jagged pieces? And the first thing you tried to do was show her that you were so over her, and you did that by parading past her with a bunch of blonde floozies? Remember that?

Well, some people never grow up. Some people like Mario Lemieux. (Ok, for the sake of the preceding analogy, you will have to imagine Kansas City as a blonde floozy. It's a stretch, we know). Shortly after getting the cold shoulder from Pittsburgh, or at least, a not sufficiently warm enough shoulder, Lemieux was seen flirting shamelessly with officials in Kansas City.

Actually, we're going to have to switch metaphors now. Kansas City has it's very own convertible hockey arena, and they've apparently gone and promised Lemieux free use of it (and Kansas City totally shaves, like every day!). That's a tempting offer. But what it really looks like is a shameless attempt at making Pittsburgh jealous. If you ask us, Lemieux doesn't have any intention of moving the Penguins to such a nowhere's burgh like Kansas City. Besides, if the Penguins do move, where exactly is number 66 going to hang from?

But forget about that. Right now we're talking about Mario Lemieux, the cocktease. This team will end up back in Pittsburgh next season, and the season after that, and in their new stadium too boot. Lemieux ought to be ashamed, a grown man like him, leading poor Kansas along like that.

We've stayed out of the whole Pittsburgh relocation discussion because our opinions on the matter didn't seem to mesh with most other Canadians. Back when Jim "Blackberry" Balsillie was leading Pittsburgh along, Canadians were salivating at the thought of another Canadian team. That was obviously Ballsy's intention all along. He payed the proper respects to the fine people of Pittsburgh of course, he's not stupid, but you knew that the moment the casino deal fell through, these Penguins were migrating north.

Here's the thing though. Canada doesn't need another NHL team. And even if we did, where would we stick it? There's no way hockey's going back to Winnipeg or Q-City, wouldn't that just be awkward? Some people were actually suggesting giving one to Kitchener-Waterloo, which, as delirious cloud-gazing goes, was pretty out there. The Kitcheloo Blackberries? Serious?

The NHL is trying to regain credibility in the US, remember? Remember? Forget about Canada, man. Get your head out of the sand. Hockey is rock solid in Canada. We know that. We invented the damn game. But we can't keep the NHL alive by ourself. We kinda really, really, really need American support, or else this whole thing tumbles down. And do you really gain meaningful cred by moving a team to something called Kitcheloo? Or even Hamilton, for that matter.

And that's ignoring the prominent fact that Pittsburgh deserves an NHL team. Two Stanleys, and Mario. And Mario! It was OK when Hartford moved, in their few decades in Connecticut, they did jack all. But Pittsburgh has history.

If you're so desperate to move a team, how bout that one in Phoenix? Do you know they have the gall to actually remind their fan(s?) that they've been there for ten years? They play with patches that say "Decade in the Desert". Umm... when you've only converted one of those seasons into playoff appearances, you'd think that they might want to keep that on the down low.

Jason