It’s time to talk about NHL expansion again. The topic which most of us have exhausted ourselves discussing is back and this time it comes from a report seen in The Providence. According to Tony Gallagher, an NHL team in Vegas is going to be a reality in the very near future.
From the article:
“Sources close to the situation have indicated Las Vegas is a done deal, the only thing to be determined being which owner will be entitled to proclaim that he brought the first major league sports franchise to Sin City.
…
With all the activity going on in the Seattle area in the last little bit it would be quite a stretch to imagine that much time and effort being spent by so many wealthy men being frittered away for nothing.”
That sounds like one confident writer regarding the Vegas situation. We’ll have to wait and see if other writers and sources come forward to back this report, but it’s safe to say that expansion is likely sooner than later. Whether it’s Vegas, Seattle or Quebec is up for all of us to debate until the NHL finally settles on a city or two.
Like it or not, expansion is coming. We’ve preached here at PDL that the NHL needs to address issues in other cities before opening up new teams, but that’s not an attractive idea when there’s guaranteed money to be made in a new city. Still, expansion does make sense purely on a competitive fairness level as the NHL currently has a 16-team East and a 14-team West. Granted they created that problem themselves with the new alignment, but it’s still one that needs fixing.
