Remember back in 2006…Sprint Center was being built and Kansas City was going to get an NHL team (or so we were told).

The owner of that team was going to be William “Boots” Del Biaggio.

“I am prepared to acquire a team for Kansas City,” said William “Boots” Del Biaggio III, co-founder of Sand Hill Capital in Menlo Park, Calif.

Del Biaggio has an agreement in principal to sign a Sprint Center lease and become a joint venture partner with Anschutz Entertainment Group Inc., the arena’s operator.

The NHL allowed Del Biaggio into their exclusive club when he later purchased 24% of the Nashville Predators. A move Gary Bettman orchestrated, along with former Predators owner Craig Leipold buying the Minnesota Wild, in order to keep the Predators in Nashville and protect Bettman’s choice of putting an expansion team in Nashville.

Well, Boots won’t be purchasing anything but cigarettes.
Disgraced financier William Del Biaggio III faces prison sentence.

He faces up to six years in prison.

the millions he needed in 2007 for his 24 per cent share of the Predators was far beyond his
means.

Del Biaggio turned to David Cacchione, a financially strapped stockbroker who owed him $2 million. According to federal prosecutors and the SEC, the duo hatched a simple, lucrative and illegal scheme.
Cacchione emailed Del Biaggio account statements from several wealthy clients showing tens of millions of dollars worth of stock holdings.
Del Biaggio then doctored the account statements by cutting out the clients’ names and pasting in his own.
Using the falsified documents, Del Biaggio obtained about $110 million in loans and loan guarantees from two NHL owners and various banks, including $4 million from the Heritage Bank of Commerce, which he and his father launched in the mid-90s.
Del Biaggio also showed the account statements to NHL authorities to back his ownership bid. And that has led some to question whether the league adequately examined Del Biaggio before authorizing the sale of the Predators to his ownership group.

OK so that “shackles” and “cigarettes” comments are exaggerations.

What isn’t an exaggeration is that the NHL will do everything it can to keep Jim Balsillie out of the league, yet they let this guy in who was basically show off with lousy scrapbooking skills. You read the quote above and say, “Seriously. The guy really thought that would work?”

I think his brings to light that there isn’t anyone, as far as we know, willing to purchase an NHL team and place them in Kansas City. And, the one guy who looked like he would do so was a shady character who never had the money in the first place.