The National Hockey League is at an odd time. The league is pulling in record revenue right now along with their continued success with attendance and ratings. There's one word on everybody's mind and this idea continues to rush at us with deafening speed.
Expansion.
The league, which hasn't expanded since adding the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Minnesota Wild back in 2000, has been reportedly playing with the idea of expansion for the past couple of seasons. For starters, the NHL realigned the conferences before last season leaving 16 teams in the Eastern Conference but just 14 teams in the Western Conference. It's almost as if they did this with the foresight of expansion in the coming years. This big disadvantage for Eastern Conference teams essentially indicates we should expect to see two new Western Conference teams in the near future.
With all this talk about expansion going on, potential candidates for new teams have been flying around. People like bringing up two potential sites in Toronto for a new team, considering the interest is there and there are arenas already set up (one in Markham, ON and one in Hamilton, ON). There's also Quebec City, where fans have been pretty vocal about getting a team back for a long time. They also have an NHL ready city located in the area.
Well those are two Eastern Cities that are ready for expansion teams but that wouldn't solve this imbalance of teams in the East.
Two more potential landing spots for NHL teams are Seattle and Las Vegas. Both of them have tremendous upside. Both of them have potential issues.
But the NHL's quest for Las Vegas is an interesting one and a new twist was thrown in earlier in the week when Tony Gallagher of the TheProvince.com announced that the NHL in Las Vegas is a "done deal". This is extraordinarily odd because anybody close to the league can tell you that the league has been very, very quiet about expansion and has not even mentioned interest in the manner.
More from the column:
"Sources close to the situation have indicated Las Vegas is a done deal, the only thing to be determined being which owner will be entitled to proclaim that he brought the first major league sports franchise to Sin City."
For starters, the article even mentions that there's no owner yet for the team which is probably the biggest factor.
Aside from that though, you can't argue it's a potentially profitable idea. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman receives plenty of heat for his decisions but you can't argue that he's helped the league grow exponentially from where it once was and that many of his ideas have been gold mines. He's already expanded to potentially disastrous locations only to see teams succeed. So he may have something going there.
An article about this expansion on Sports Illustrated paints a perfect picture of who Gary has been as a commissioner:
"Give the commissioner credit. Bettman has had the vision and the courage to put teams in locations his predecessors never would have considered. Once in place, he's laid everything on the line, including his own political credit, to help them survive. And in many of those locales the game has thrived.....
Seeing a green light where others see red has been one of the defining characteristics of Bettman's regime. But he's not in the habit of making decisions to secure his legacy, or to say he was the first to plant a flag in soil other leagues see as salted. If there's even a chance he'll say yes when everyone else is saying no, it's because all the pieces are in place....
if Gary believes that Vegas is ready for the NHL maybe we should all just listen to the man."
Many people are quick to point out some of the obvious obstacles and challenges of placing a team in Las Vegas but they're not all unsolvable (also, the league is familiar with Las Vegas, seeing as they've placed one of their marquee events, the NHL Awards Show, in 2009 and have been using that location for the show ever since)
Firstly, the team will bound to be a money-maker. MGM and AEG have already started putting together a state-of-the-art $375 million arena and initial reports indicate that it will contain a large quantity of suites and boxes. Needless to say, casinos will purchase many of these tickets and distribute these to big name visitors and their guests. The team will for sure make money off of this. People also point out that of the few actual residents of the area, many of them work in those casinos at night and therefore would not be able to attend the games at 7:00 local time.
But there's some speculation that the team might have their home games at 7:00 ET A) to solve the problem for the locals who have night shifts and B) it's Las Vegas, gambling center of the world. It would make almost too much sense to have the local team bets in with the rest of the majority of sporting events.
Could this Las Vegas team actually build a solid following for such a tourist-heavy location?
Well Las Vegas, since 2003, has been home to a hockey team belonging to the ECHL, the Las Vegas Wranglers. This team has the highest winning percentage in ECHL history. They've won their division twice and even made two championship appearances.
So how do the Wranglers do in attendance?
Actually, not too bad.
The Wranglers routinely finish the season slightly above the league average in attendance. The 7,000+ seat arena has an average crowd (according to hockey database) of about 5,000. If a minor league team can accomplish this, I'm confident, with the casinos helping out, a professional team can hold their own.
Another interesting factor is the kind of crowd that would show up to these games. They'll probably draw in a ton of Snow Birds, older people from Canada and up north who travel south during the winter. Those cold-climate folk will certainly attend these games. But that means they may have a very away-heavy crowd which would be interesting to see how they deal with it.
Additionally, we'll have a lot of business men show up to game. Like I said, the casinos will gobble up the tickets and redistribute them and you'll have a scenario where people will go to these games, not out of interest, but for gambling purposes. You'll have people cheering for the spread instead of the game!
Once again, there's no way of ever knowing how any professional sports team will work out in Vegas until one actually tries it. And that's why the NHL has a unique opportunity to do something big.
The NHL enjoys breaking ground. Their breakthroughs with player safety has sprung a new generation of smarter sporting. Other leagues have already copied their fantasy draft for All Star Games. The NBA has even tried mimicking their outdoor game success.
If the NHL can land in Vegas first, and do it successfully, it'd be a big step forward for professional sports. Other leagues have been reluctant to test the market given the obvious concerns. MLS, the soccer league in America, is also working on putting a team in Sin City. But the NHL knows if they can get their first, it'd be important for the progression and popularity of the league. They'll be the first league to "test the waters" and all eyes would be on them to see how they perform and this sort of spotlight can really impact the league greatly.
But the NHL hasn't even gone public yet with their expansion plans or dreams so they had to deny this report. It doesn't mean it'll never happen. But the league refuses to show their hand until everything's in the spot.
Will the NHL add four teams by the 2017 hundredth anniversary of the league? Who knows.
But will they one day break ground in Las Vegas.
I think that's a safe bet.
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