Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Talk of NHL expansion heats up

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To the rink now and the terms ‘expansion’ and ‘National Hockey League’ have worked their way back into the headlines. But when it comes to the NHL, it can be difficult to find out if the rumours are true.

The story came out of a report in the Vancouver Province which quotes an unnamed source in saying that there will be new teams in Seattle, Quebec City, Las Vegas, and a second team in Toronto. Any time we hear NHL expansion, people around here wonder if Hamilton could get in. Well, the NHL is throwing cold water on all rumours today with league Vice-President Bill Daly saying it is not in their plans.

One man says that Hamilton is even less likely to get the nod. Back in the early nineties, Gabe Macaluso was part of a bid to bring the NHL to Hamilton, but the league told him:
“Gabe, please, don’t come knocking on our door unless you come down with Toronto on one arm, and Buffalo on the other arm.”

The city may have felt close on three failed attempts by former Blackberry CEO Jim Balsillie to bring hockey here, but Macaluso says that the bulldogs are as close as we will get — as far as the other cities mentioned today: “I don’t think this hoped out of nowhere. I believe there’s been some, some discussions about this over the last couple of years and the cities they’re looking at are cities they’ve done studies on.”

But the rumours are just that and when talk of a large scale NHL expansion comes along, sportswriters like Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News tend to question them: “These things don’t tend to pop up overnight and it’s pretty rare when it does happen.”

In the past few years, the NHL has avoided expansion thanks in part to weak franchises in the sun belt. Kennedy says he can see why the NHL would consider this. Quebec City has almost completed a new arena built to NHL specifications. Seattle has shown hockey interest through major junior, and Vegas has been long speculated as an expansion city. And despite slowed momentum for the Markham arena, Toronto remains the largest hockey market in the world.

Ryan Kennedy: “It’s really just a matter of — is that where the NHL wants teams when they make that next step?”

It is also believed that if there is expansion, each new owner would have to pay around $400 million dollars to join the club. As for the Toronto issue, he suspects that they would get around the Leafs territorial rights by having one of the current owners break away from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and own the expansion team.

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