Fraud and lies. That’s the NHL way. And it just never stops.
Every hockey fan with a brain bigger than a walnut knows that lying is a way of life in the NHL, but commissioner Gary Bettman, a man the Winnipeg Sun called a “rat-weasel” in a headline on Sunday, would sure like everyone to think differently.
According to a court filing from Jerry Moyes, the man on the hook for the monstrous debts of the Phoenix Coyotes, the people for whom he ran the Phoenix franchise seem to lie for fun: “The National Hockey League acted fraudulently in its bid to take control of the Phoenix Coyotes,” Moyes claimed this past week. “And the NHL’s current position proves the fraudulent inducement claim.”
Funny how the word fraud always comes up in any court filing involving Bettman’s NHL.
In fact, we pointed out earlier here at rivercitysportsblog.com that at least six of the NHL’s most prominent owners were convicted (or are in court facing charges) of fraud. To review:
1) When he took over as commissioner, one of his closest friends and supporters inside the league was Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall. McNall went to jail for fraud.
2) Former Islanders owner John Spano was sentenced in January of 2000 to 71 months in federal prison for bank fraud.
3) Later in the Isles ownership history, long after former Coyotes owner Steven Gluckstern nearly went broke owning the franchise, Bettman brought in Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar. Kumar is now serving a 12-year sentence for a multi-billion dollar fraud.
4) Bettman also needed help after Buffalo Sabres owner Seymour Knox died in 1996, so he found cable TV magnate John Rigas. In 2002, while he was the Sabres owner, Rigas was convicted of, you guessed it, fraud. He’s still in prison.
5) Then came former Anaheim Ducks owner Henry Samueli. He’s a big time crook who, among other things, lied to the SEC about his role in a $2.2 billion stock-option scam. He’s currently doing his time.
6) Then there was “Bootsie.” With the Nashville Predators in bankruptcy protection, Bettman refused to sell the team to Balsillie because Balsillie wanted to move it to Canada. So Bettman went out and found a wealthy venture capitalist named William (Bootsie) Del Biaggio III. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess, but it wasn’t long before Bootsie was facing fraud charges brought on by everybody from the SEC to Luc Robitaille to Joe Montana. Bootsie hasn’t gone to jail yet, but there are a lot of people who would like to see him in the crow bar hotel. Today, he faces a six year term.
Meanwhile, Bettman’s pals have been saying Balsillie is “very brash” and “doesn’t want to play by the rules.” What rules? There are no rules. And if there are, Bettman will change them as he goes.
Don’t believe me? There are plenty of examples, including this current one:
Bettman claims Moyes handed over control of the Coyotes to the NHL last November in return for financing, and that a team of league officials has been running day to day operations ever since. However, just as Bettman himself claimed for six months, Moyes has now filed an affidavit saying that the league never had control of the team and “did not want control.”
Moyes added: “By taking a different position now, the league is trying to fraudulently take the Phoenix Coyotes franchise away from me.”
Moyes has argued from the start of this proceeding that NHL officials have made it clear since Day 1 that after the financing was arranged, in November of 2008, the league “did not plan to operate the club and that the arrangment didn’t change anything in terms of how the club was run.”
According to documents filed in court: “The league did not have day to day control, but merely received weekly financial updates.”
Meanwhile, Bettman lies with such ease, you’d think he was Dick Cheney.
On his Sirius XM Radio show, Bettman said, “Ripping a franchise out of one city in violation of League rules and procedures to put it somewhere else isn’t the way we do business. and comparisons to Quebec and Winnipeg aren’t valid, because we couldn’t find anybody who wanted to own the teams there.”
I don’t know about Quebec, but as it pertains to Winnipeg, that is an outright lie.
Winnipeg had an ownership group in place, but Bettman looked me right in the eye and claimed that group ownership was not permitted in the NHL. He wanted one owner, period. No groups.
Then, after he ripped the Jets out of Winnipeg and shipped them to Phoenix for the 13-year disaster, he allowed an ownership group in Edmonton.
The truth and Gary Bettman are strangers.
