Conspiracy Theory, Starring Gary Bettman

I'm sure many of you might recall an embarrassing episode for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman earlier this year, when it was revealed that Anschutz Entertainment Group, the owners of the Los Angeles Kings, and Craig Leipold, the former owner of the Nashville Predators and the current owner of the Minnesota Wild, had worked together to finance the purchase of a minority ownership stake in the Predators by William "Boots" Del Baggio -- a man who was more or less the second coming of former New York Islanders owner John Spano.

While the loan to Del Baggio from Leipold wasn't that big a deal -- owners of assets help finance their sales all the time -- the loan from AEG to Del Baggio was a tad more problematic. You see, it could be argued that AEG was loaning Del Baggio the loot in order to induce him to move the Predators to Kansas City, where a brand new AEG-owned facility is looking for an anchor tenant.

That's not the sort of thing you want to see go public when fans in Nashville want the team to stay put, and another multi-millionaire can't understand why the league doesn't want his money when he's ready to move any team at all to Southern Ontario.

When the news first went public, Bettman cried foul, and let the press know that he hadn't been in on the details of the loan to Del Baggio -- this despite the fact that Leipold and Anschutz are both known to be among Bettman's closest confidants. Later, AEG President Tim Leiweke took a bullet when he took responsibility for the Del Baggio loan and claimed it was made in an attempt to convince Del Baggio to transfer the operating rights to the Sommet Center, the Predators home rink, to AEG.

Fast forward to Monday of this week when Tripp Mickle of Sports Business Journal reported that the league had adopted a new rule whereby owners are now required to disclose any and all business arrangements between one another. As Mickle also points out, the disclosure rule will also apply to prospective owners in the hopes it will prevent uncomfortable episodes like the one earlier this year involving Del Baggio.

Over at the Columbus Dispatch, Michael Arace thinks the whole thing stinks:

I still smell a rat. It has been reported before, by the Toronto Star, that Bettman knew nothing about the Leipold-Anschutz-Del Biaggio ownership conspiracy. I didn't buy it then. I don't buy it now. This internal league memo about a new transparency seems window dressing to me. It has the ring of a calculated leak.

Bettman is a corporate lawyer of high repute. He is always the smartest man in the room. Just ask him. Leipold and Anschutz are two of his most loyal advisors on the Board of Governors. In my opinion, Bettman had to know what was going on. The only way to get the stink off his hands is by acting as if he was in the dark. But I'm not buying it.

I've seen Bettman move teams before and he had his hands on most, if not all, of the strings. That is likely the case here. And if it is, he should face the music. The conflicts of interest that ran rampant in the Predators transaction are a serious stain on the NHL's credibility, which wasn't that great to begin with.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'd like to put a question to Arace: if Bettman is to "face the music," just who does he propose should be in the band?

Bettman serves at the pleasure of the owners of the NHL. Despite the honorific of commissioner, he's not a government officlal, so we shouldn't use the same terms when we talk about how he does his job. NHL teams, at least the last time I looked, are private businesses, not public trusts, though you never know when the ownership group of the Florida Panthers might apply for a bailout from the U.S. Treasury.

So while Del Baggio's behavior might be of questionable legality, why don't we stop pretending that the actions of AEG and Leipold are anything more than embarrassing for a league that's simply trying to maximize the value of its assets as it sees fit?

If and when the Predators leave Nashville, it will undoubtedly be a sad day, as sad as when the Hartford Whalers left for Carolina, the Atlanta Flames headed to Calgary or the Cleveland Barons just up and disappeared. But we shouldn't pretend that if and when that day comes, the decision will rest on anything more or less than the bottom line.