Today's read of the day is an easy choice, as SportsBuiness Journal's Tripp Mickle hits it out of the park with a lengthy expose on disgraced former Sharks and Predators minority owner William (Boots) Del Biaggio.

There are a lot of good excerpts, but this one stood out to me:

With the NHL buried in contentious labor negotiations and the 2004-05 season suspended, Boots approached executives and asked them to introduce him to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. The league was in the middle of its lockout, but Bettman was on the lookout for potential owners when a sports finance executive called and asked the commissioner if he would be willing to meet Boots. The two met in Bettman’s corner office and discussed the future of the NHL. It wasn’t an extensive conversation, but it put Boots into a special group of potential owners whom Bettman kept in mind when teams came up for sale. It was a tough list to join, and the access it provided was invaluable. As one person familiar with NHL business said, "There’s this little club — the overall potential ownership club — and once your name’s known in the circle, you get to know all 30 owners." Boots was officially part of that club, and he made his first run at an NHL team soon after meeting Bettman.

What's amazing is that a huge portion of the Nashville franchise remains in limbo, even after more than a year later. Here's hoping that situation can be figured out shortly as I think the local group led by David Freeman has done some real good there so far.