I’m not a financial expert by the slightest stretch, but I feel safe to say that it’s not very nice when someone compares someone else to Bernie Madoff.
That’s exactly what Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi did regarding Oilers GM Steve Tambellini in the angry aftermath of the team’s (eventually successful) attempts to trade Ryan Smyth back to his second home in Edmonton. The Kings executive was upset that the players he received - Gilbert Brule in the botched deal and then Colin Fraser in the finalized one - came back injured.
Lombardi was smoking mad months ago, but it seems like time cooled his anger, as The Los Angeles Times’ Helene Elliott reports that he apologized for his remarks.
“I should have never said what I said publicly,” Lombardi said. “It was the wrong thing to do.”
That might be true from a P.R. standpoint, but let’s hope he doesn’t learn too much from this situation. After all, we’d lose out on a lot of great one-liners if Lombardi developed what most of us call a “filter.”