NHL Board of Governors to approve opening of expansion process; Atlanta and Houston believed to be leading candidates

[DomBarr]

Bell is going to through a wrench in this. There is no way that they just happened to sell their share in the MLSE the same week that they open expansion.
They are either going to push Quebec OR GTA team 2 and they have an agreement with Rogers that they won't hold it up for encroaching on the Leafs territory).
Bell as a 100% owner will be way to enticing for Bettman to ignore
to keep it in perspective they can pay a $1.5Billion expansion fee and then build a $2B stadium and still have $200 M left over from their sale proceeds to seed the initial hockey ops department.

there is no other candidate that can do that.

 

[KeydGV21]

What terrible news. I don’t even care what city gets the teams, this is awful for existing fans everywhere.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

Can we stop expanding? The NHL doesn’t need 50 teams.

Do fans get a say? The majority of fans probably don’t favor expansion.

The fans' say is at the gate. You don't like it, don't go and don't watch. I'm hoping the four is Atlanta, Houston, Arizona with a real owner, and Sacramento or Portland but I doubt the options past Atlanta and Houston.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

The fans' say is at the gate. You don't like it, don't go and don't watch. I'm hoping the four is Atlanta, Houston, Arizona with a real owner, and Sacramento or Portland but I doubt the options past Atlanta and Houston.

How is it at the gate? Fans showing up to an NHL game has nothing to do with whether they approve of expansion.

 

[LeafGrief]

The league was at it's best with 30 teams IMO.

With goalies especially. Look at the SV% by year. It's gone down every year since Vegas arrived. I know some of that is goalie pad reduction, what year was that again?

So I'm assuming these Houston and Atlanta teams will be here two years from now. Meaning from 2017/18 to 2026/27 the league will have added 4 new teams and 80 + roster slots. There's a cascade effect here that forces sub-NHL talent to be put on NHL rosters. It also means there's less and less viable options to find a legitimate 1C, 1D, top line forward, etc...

It'll be harder to build through the draft as everyone's picks get downshifted by 2. Whether you're a rebuilding team or not, it's going to suck.

Coaches and executives are equally bad. With the salary cap, so much of a team's fortunes are determined by the GM who's signing long term deals. A single contract can sewer a market for close to a decade (Huberdeau, Vlasic) and there really aren't that many people who can compete in the GM arena.

This dilutes talent across the board. One team at a time, the dilution might not be that intense, but over time it so clearly adds up. The 4th line tweeners in today's league are just not NHL quality and analogous to whatever AHL'ers teams have waiting in the wings,, and that's a result of dilution not an argument that "dilution is no big deal".

The NHL should probably send William Karlsson a 50m check for how much his success has helped spark expansion, despite the fact that he might have broken out in Columbus or on a different squad in a 30 team league.

 

[piqued]

You go where the people are. If you want to be a major league you need teams in the major US markets and Houston (5) and Atlanta (6) fit the bill. These places have grown by leaps and bounds just in the last few decades, are full of transplants, and any franchise that uses the modern expansion model of Vegas/Seattle will hit the ground running. What people fail to account for is that expansion increases the talent pool in the long run.

 

[Metroid]

Bell is going to through a wrench in this. There is no way that they just happened to sell their share in the MLSE the same week that they open expansion.
They are either going to push Quebec OR GTA team 2 and they have an agreement with Rogers that they won't hold it up for encroaching on the Leafs territory).
Bell as a 100% owner will be way to enticing for Bettman to ignore
to keep it in perspective they can pay a $1.5Billion expansion fee and then build a $2B stadium and still have $200 M left over from their sale proceeds to seed the initial hockey ops department.

there is no other candidate that can do that.

Mississauga just moved their OHL team to Brampton... Rebuild Hershey Center area boom
;-)

 

[No Fun Shogun]

The NHL when considering the pros and cons of expansion and only looking at the expansion fees they'll get:

 

[hangman005]

Can we stop expanding? The NHL doesn’t need 50 teams.

Do fans get a say? The majority of fans probably don’t favor expansion.

The league wants new fans, we all know Gary Bettman enjoys that new fan smell.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

How is it at the gate? Fans showing up to an NHL game has nothing to do with whether they approve of expansion.

Because that's the only part that the fans have any sort of control. Where else would you expect a say to occur? The fans don't and shouldn't have a say on whether expansion is approved.

 

[StickShift]

I think the first three are where it will land.

I also know San Diego Gulls are well supported as an AHL club but, can SoCal support another NHL team? LA, Anaheim already, who both have solid fan bases and ST a numbers. But I wonder if they are saturated for NHL hockey…

The state essentially has the population of Canada—and I think if the right arena is built the NHL would be eager to jump into another market with an NBA/NFL void to compete against.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

This is all about not leaving out two massive media markets. It's why Phoenix will eventually get another team.

 

[ponder719]

Do fans get a say?

No.

 

[Monsieur Miz]

More teams, more meaningless games.

 

[Skullz]

This is getting asinine. Let's settle in at 32 for a decade or so at least.

Rather than growing the game it seems like Bettman's only strategy is to churn out new franchises.

 

[SomeDude]

The fans' say is at the gate. You don't like it, don't go and don't watch. I'm hoping the four is Atlanta, Houston, Arizona with a real owner, and Sacramento or Portland but I doubt the options past Atlanta and Houston.

They don’t need to sell a ticket when they can just get billionaires to keep shelling out expansion fees. Thats why this keeps happening every 4 years or so. Gotta keep that revenue inflated. They’ll go to 80 teams if they have to.

 

[Three On Zero]

Love it, growth is good.

 

[SEALBound]

This is incorrect. The second team was not lost due to fan interest, but due to deliberate sabotage by their ownership (who never wanted to own them in the first place but were obliged to buy them as a package deal to also get the arena and the basketball team).

The fans had a "save the team" rally at the end and a pedestrian amount of people showed up. I don't recall the final headcount but it was laughable.

 

[Pinkfloyd]

They don’t need to sell a ticket when they can just get billionaires to keep shelling out expansion fees. Thats why this keeps happening every 4 years or so. Gotta keep that revenue inflated. They’ll go to 80 teams if they have to.

Probably and that's their decision to make. If the fans have an issue, their only recourse is to boycott. Inevitably, that is the bottom line.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

Yay, more player poaching from our favorite teams.

 

[WaW]

The more teams we keep adding, the less I care about the cup. It's already such a lottery with the low hard salary cap and being so heavily dependent on draft lottery luck, adding more teams and thereby further dilute the talent pool and reduce the chances fans get to experience the joy of a cup run just devalues it more and more to me. Having already experienced and enjoyed it before, this news is just boring.

 

[Salsero1]

The fans had a "save the team" rally at the end and a pedestrian amount of people showed up. I don't recall the final headcount but it was laughable.

There was no saving the team. The people who owned the building locked them out. Any sort of rally was purely symbolic at that point. Atlanta fans were given a massive finger by the owners and the greater hockey universe. I can't blame them for not putting on a show at some rally.

 

[TGWL]

"Dad, will I ever see *insert team* win a cup?"
"I don't know, son, there's 50 teams trying to win... "

 

[CokenoPepsi]

f*** off Atlanta.

I wish someone was interested in Portland

 

[WaitingForThatCab]

Can't wait to watch my favorite team get assf***ed by expansion drafts again.