All of the talk about expansion in the NHL has centered around the city of Las Vegas. As the league continues to monitor and survey interest in Vegas, other future expansion sites have faded out of the headlines. Vegas is the hot topic, but it’s clear the NHL will need to add a total of two teams in order to balance the lopsided Conferences.
Where would a new team play? According to Ron MacLean, the answer is in Quebec City and they may have a team within the next few years.
MacLean’s comments were uploaded and posted on Reddit:
How trustworthy is MacLean as a source? That’s certainly debatable, but his comments and certainty are intriguing. His three-year window sounds pretty far-fetched considering how long things have taken with Vegas, but it seems more plausible if you assume that only means an announcement and that it’d actually be longer before a team actually hits the ice. The city has an arena worthy of an NHL team, but logistics take time.
MacLean’s comments are an educated guess at best, but they’re plausible.
While Quebec City makes a lot of sense for an NHL team, there are definitely some issues. One is the fact that the NHL currently has 16 teams in the East and only 14 in the West. The addition of Vegas, assuming it happens, makes that a 16-15 split, but the league would still need another Western team. Quebec City is the exact opposite of a Western team. Of course there are other issues as well, but that first hurdle would mean that the NHL would have to relocate or realign a current Eastern team over to the Western Conference.
There are other potential cons for Quebec City, but there are a ton of positives. The return of the Nordiques (honestly, why would they name the team anything else?) is enough to get any hockey fan excited.
