Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports
We’re nearing the end of summer, and there’s relative peace and quiet in the hockey world.
But not far on the horizon is a subject that will thrill some hockey fans and anger others.
It’s the topic of NHL expansion. And no matter what you think of the league growing by another two teams, brace yourself because it looks likely, even if it’s not a priority in the short term.
There are signs of NHL expansion in many places – beginning with the league’s actions when the Arizona Coyotes franchise moved to Utah.
The agreement now-former Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo had with the league stipulated that if he secured or built an NHL-caliber arena in five years, he would get an expansion team to play in the desert.
That didn’t happen, but the fact the NHL was prepared to “reactivate” a team in Arizona via expansion shows you it’s prepared to increase the league’s teams by at least one. And for parity’s sake, we’re comfortable in assuming the NHL will want one new team in the Eastern Conference and another in the Western Conference.
Meanwhile, as the league’s business improves, the costs associated with adding teams are just too lucrative for commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners to sneer at.
The Ottawa Senators sold this past year for nearly $1 billion. And more recent news about Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik selling a majority stake in the team at close to a $2-billion valuation tells you all you need to know about how good business really is.
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In any case, if the NHL really wanted to shoot down expansion talk, Bettman would’ve taken a hard line in public statements about the issue. He hasn’t done that. He has said expansion is not a priority and that the league isn’t actively looking at it, but he has discussed a range for an expansion fee the owners could be interested in, and he’s said the NHL has met with prospective groups and that the league’s stance could change depending on several factors.
That means he and the owners surely know how much money they all could make by moving from 32 teams to 34. Whether the new markets are in Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Arizona, or elsewhere (even you, Omaha, Neb.), there’s a sense of inevitability about expansion now – or at least, in the next five to 10 years.
Is there some risk associated with expansion? Sure. The overall product will be watered down to a degree, and somewhere like Atlanta has already had two kicks at the can for an NHL team – and both times, it wound up seeing its team relocated. It would be humiliating, to say the least, if a relocation like that happened again.
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However, given the tremendous success the NHL has had with its most recent expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, you can understand why Bettman & Co. would be confident they can make two more teams financially viable.
In doing so, the NHL would be the first of the “big four” North American pro sports leagues to expand to 34 teams, but we suspect it wouldn’t be the last. There’s simply too much money to be made for team owners to turn down an opportunity to increase their slice of the financial pie. And there are too many cities frothing at the mouth to become part of the NHL landscape. The business of big-league sports has really never been better.
It’s about as positive a macro picture as the league could hope for, and it’s why this writer fully expects the NHL to formally consider expanding again sometime in the next few years.
You might not be over the moon about the prospect of the league growing by two teams, but you definitely should prepare yourself for it. Slowly, but surely, the NHL is moving toward expansion, and the question now is not “if”, but “when and where” the new teams will exist.
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News Summary:
- Opinion: Like It Or Not, Prepare Yourself For Even More NHL Expansion
- Check all news and articles from the latest NHL updates.