Should the arena and financial situations in Arizona, Florida, Ottawa and Calgary all be solved favorably where the long term future was guaranteed for those existing teams to remain in their local markets, then I believe it creates one last final expansion possibility to go to 34 teams. (Assumes Seattle gets 32nd team and Isles belmont plan is a go) Divisions would be eliminated and everybody would play 3 games within their now 17 team conference and 2 games against the other 17 team conference. (3*16+2*17=82 games, which is what teams play now).
If the expansion fees were remain in the 500-600 million territory, then I would hold those last 2 spots for Atlanta and Houston only. You would keep the balance of 17 teams in the eastern time zone and 17 teams in the others combined. This would then also finally allow the NHL to say that all major media markets in the US have a franchise, hopefully generating more expensive tv contracts. If I am an NHL owner, I have no interest in expanding to traditional markets as the revenue potential is while more certain, lower, and thus not worth having to split overall league revenues with. i have no inside knowledge as to what NHL owners are thinking , but if i were one, that is the way I would think about things.
I would leave Quebec, Hamilton,Kansas City,Portland and possibly Cleveland as emergency relocation candidates.