Boots puts Bettman in awkward position

[Narayan]

Good read...

http://www.globesports.com/servlet/s...rtsHockey/home

[ultrawhiteness]

haha, o man i love stephen brunt.

i saw the original tennessean article somewhere recently... needless to say, people in nashville seem pretty pissed off.

thats what you get for giving part ownership of your hockey team to some pirate named \"boots\"

[Shao]

Great article, good insights.

Points evermore to some sort of conspiracy to block Balsillie.

[fzusher]

There\'s no conspiracy to block Balsilie. Its out in the open - a lot of team owners/governors have the same sentiment regarding him: he\'s a loose canon who will rock our boat rather than play ball, so why invite him to the club? Gary Bettman blocked him initially because he doesn\'t want a US team moving back to Canada - it\'d be a sign of the failure of his \'vision\' for hockey expansion into the US. But now, after the way Balsilie conducted himself: screwing up an NHL event - can\'t remember which one, but it was a publicity granting one - by starting to sell tickets in Hamilton and taking the spotlight to himself; taking the league to a quasi-judicial body (the anti-trust board in Canada, whatever the heck its called) and so on. Owners are looking at this and going \'this is the Mark Cuban of hockey, and we\'d rather not have to deal with the headache. Even with Garry out of the way they\'d still oppose Balsilie, regardless of where he wants to take whichever team he buys.

[Shao]

conspiracy meaning that it\'s not out in the open for us....you have to piece it together, and its likely to involve a few parties; bettman, possible TO, Buffalo and other GM\'s.