The Bag Skate: An Open Letter to Gary Bettman

Is it too hot for hockey? You may be right, but until the cold weather returns, welcome to The Bag Skate, FanHouse's afternoon roundup of everything that's happening on a typical offseason weekday.

Today's primal scream comes from the guys at Melt Your Face Off, who have penned an open letter to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in wake of the news that a small knot of his own owners engineered a loan to help a penniless businessman -- William "Boots" DelBaggio -- boost a piece of the Nashville Predators.

Did I forget to mention that they did it behind Bettman's back?

HOW DO YOU LET THAT HAPPEN? You are the commissioner for a top-flight sports league in the most industrialized nation in the world. You are supposedly the most powerful man in your sport. Now, you claim that while owners are lending each other money to keep the franchises in their own little AllTel Circle of Friends, you thought everything was hunky dory?

"Most powerful man in your sport?" Come now, everybody knows that Brian Burke is the most powerful man in the NHL. Just ask him.

That being said, the very moment when Bettman discovered this little bit of chicanery has to be marked as the low point in his tenure at the top of the league. It's one thing for everyone fan in the world to use you as a human punching bag, but it's another thing entirely when the very men who hired you to do the job don't trust you enough to let you know what they're doing.

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