Bettman under the microscope

From Stephen Brunt of the Globe & Mail:

That “portability” became Del Biaggio’s No. 1 marketing plank in trying to attract fresh money.

Unfortunately, the local Nashville ownership and the local politicians who were subsidizing the franchise didn’t know a thing about that quiet arrangement.

And just a little bit of due diligence on Boots might have revealed that he was broke, that he may have been securing loans on false premises, that he was a very, very bad risk — before he wound up in bankruptcy protection, being sued from all angles, and under investigation by the FBI.

In any other walk of life, in any other business, bad judgment on that scale would get a chief executive fired.

Read the entire article here.

This story is turning into a disaster for the NHL. Clearly “Boots” should have been nowhere near an NHL franchise. I’m sure Bettman will release a statement in the next day or two containing an explanation for what exactly happened.