I get the argument of growing the game, and a bigger base for future players. But Atlanta doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's failed a couple of times, and a grand total of three NHL players were ever born in the State... that isn't current players, that's historically. Will yet another attempt suddenly encourage people in Georgia to play hockey, when it appears it hasn't in the past?
Houston I get, big city, maybe it works... I don't know.
In the short-term, it means 46 players are now NHL roster players, that would otherwise be playing in the AHL. I don't think that helps the quality of the game any. Maybe over a 20-25 year period, it encourages enough new players to make that gap up, but that's a long time period.
At some point, growth just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, who knows if they are really considering it or not... Bettman says no, but then I don't really trust him.
“We’re not going through an expansion process,” Bettman said in a small scrum today. “Other than updating the [league’s] board [of directors] in October of the places that expressed interest, nothing else is gonna be done. Everything else was either speculation or had no basis.”