There are two big reasons that Balsillie is on the outside looking in. The first is Bettman's ego. Balsillie has made no bones about purchasing a team and relocating them to Canada, and chances are, the team he would buy would be one of the non-traditional market franchises. This act would force Bettman to admit that he was wrong about putting a team in, say, Miami or Nashville during the crazy expansion era. He doesn't want to do that. I mean, how many times has he come out and admitted that something that he has done was not the right thing for the league? The second issue at hand here is that Bettman views Balsillie as a maverick of sorts, and he sees all the fun that his former NBA boss David Stern is having with Mark Cuban, who made his fortune in technology, is a huge basketball fan, and has no problem saying what's on his mind. It's not to much of a stretch to think that Bettman views Balsillie as a Cuban clone, a guy who will not be afraid to emerge from the Old Boys Club to constantly and unabashedly play verbal foil to the commish (even though a good chunk of what Balsillie would say would merely be echoes of what the vast majority of fans have been saying throughout the Bettman era).

His passion is exactly why he needs to have a team. He's a fan first, which is what an owner should be. The way Bettman did everything he could to prevent Balsillie from getting the Predators was appalling. The sad tone that underlies all of this is that Bettman is constantly trying to push the the league on apathetic parties while inexplicably denying the league people who are passionate about it and would so badly want to be part of it, like Balsillie. Just chalk this up to another reason why I think Bettman needs to split town.