This is not about whether or not Mr.
Balsillie would make a suitable owner … This is about the league’s rules and the enforceability of our rules. Gary Bettman In explaining his latest bid to bring another NHL team to Southern Ontario, Waterloo’s Jim Balsillie says: “I’m clearly just a passionate hockey fan.” He is that. But he is also so much more. Yes, he can easily afford to offer $212.5 million (U.S.) for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes, but he can, and does, make enormous charitable donations and bankroll a number of Ontario-based think tanks. He is as committed to solving global issues as he is to pursuing his hockey dreams, which he’s had since his childhood in Peterborough. What makes James Laurence Balsillie tick Nothing more than a challenge, the bigger the better. In this 48-year-old dynamo NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has a formidable foe and would-be ally. Twice Bettman has frustrated Balsillie purchase bids, involving the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators. Now, he’s back for more and no one should be surprised. In a speech earlier this year, Balsillie described himself as “the quant-jock from Peterborough who doesn’t quit.”
“Quant” refers to quantitative, as in numbers, as in math, as in finances. Balsillie is a chartered accountant, a 1984 graduate of the University of Toronto’s Trinity College who went on to earn his MBA from Harvard in 1989.