Balsillie is in the picture

From Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette:

The National Hockey League has gone to great lengths to keep Jim Balsillie from buying an NHL team, but he may be in a position to buy Williams (Boots) Del Biaggio III’s 27-per-cent stake in the Nashville Predators.

Del Biaggio filed for bankruptcy last Friday and his assets include the minority stake in the Predators. He joined a group of local investors as part of a plan to keep the team in Nashville and out of the hands of Balsillie, who offered considerably more money than the local group.

While the NHL head office insists that the board of governors decides who should own a team, the fact is that league officials see Balsillie as a nuisance because he has said he wants to buy a franchise and move it to southern Ontario. This is not considered a desirable outcome because (a) such a team would infringe on the territory of existing franchises in Toronto and Buffalo and (b) it would be a tacit admission that expansion has been a failure in at least one U.S. city.

Read the entire article here.

Hickey raises many good points in his piece, the most important being the fact that Del Biaggio’s creditors only care about getting as much cash as possible. It appears Balsillie’s may be closing in on finally getting into the NHL circle.