NHL Roundup: Piling on the Paisans

When someone called William "Boots" Del Biaggio III surfaced as an investor in the Nashville Predators last year, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who snickered to himself and wondered about this wealthy individual's connection to unsavory financial activities. I wondered if perhaps the arena in Nashville would be struck by "Italian Lightning*", facilitating a move to Kansas City, Western Ontario, or, perhaps, Danbury, Connecticut.

Well, turns out ol' Bootsie just might be a crook.

And somewhere, Sal Paolantonio shakes his head in disappointment.


(*Also known as "Jewish Lightning" in some circles, "Italian Lightning" has occurred when an inconveniently located edifice burns down under nebulous circumstances, facilitating new construction on the now-unoccupied land. My liberal guilt flares up a bit less severely when I refer to it as "Italian Lightning" as l'm actually half Italian and hail from a region in which Italian-Americans account for the largest ethnic group and operate an overwhelming percentage of local construction companies.)

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And also, this:

The CBC -- which, you may recall, had to scrounge up a mighty amount of cash not long ago to keep the broadcast of "Hockey Night In Canada" from moving to the greener* pastures of cable TV -- has nixed from its budget the rights fees to its longstanding theme song and will adopt a new theme song immediately.

(Note: This is the actual NFL Films/"This Week In Baseball" style instrumental opening theme, not Nickelback's cover of Elton John's "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting".)

This is almost certainly going to play out like New Coke (later "Coke II"... mmm...) and MLB's short-lived decision to put "Spider-Man III" advertising on the bases. Especially if the executives behind the Nickelback decision are left to come up with the replacement.

It's reminiscent of the final episode of "The Ed Sullivan Show" -- we never knew the venerable theme song was going away and never had our chance to savor it one last time. Hear it here -- even if it's your first time hearing it, you'll miss it.


(*Is Canadian money green?)

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