At first blush, it seems like a patently ridiculous notion. Why would the National Hockey League ever entertain the possibility of a two-team expansion at a time when so many franchises, especially those in the southern United States, are on shaky ground in the first place?
Two reasons: One, dollars. Two, symmetry. Never underestimate the importance of greed and the desire to grow when it comes to the NHL. No, they didn't learn a thing the last time around.
First money: The rumors circulating around expansion fees are that teams would pay in the neighborhood of $150 million in order to gain entry into the NHL – a big hike over the $80 million paid in the last round of expansion that brought us Nashville, Atlanta, Minnesota and Columbus. A bonus for NHL owners: expansion fees do not count as revenue in terms of their partnership with the players’ association, so that’s all money in the bank for teams in the Original 30.
Second symmetry: Two more teams in the Western Conference would enable them to shift either Detroit or Columbus to the East and give the league two 16-team conferences, which could then be divided into four, eight-team divisions. It would help with scheduling and also with the playoff format (could an NCAA basketball-style bracket system be far behind?)
It would also bring a high-profile member of the entertainment community, Jerry Bruckheimer, into the NHL fold, someone with the requisite deep pockets to make a go of the team, as well as lending his considerable cache as a Hollywood insider to an industry that desperately craves recognition and acceptance.
SportsBusiness Daily reported Bruckheimer’s interest in a Vegas expansion franchise on Tuesday.
Bruckheimer would probably be a far more attractive to the NHL as an owner than, say, Research In Motion’s Jim Balsillie, who really likes to do things his own way – and isn’t necessarily interested in going through traditional NHL channels in order to facilitate the shift of the Nashville Predators to southern Ontario (assuming the sale goes through later this month and gets board of governors approval).
That, by the way, should not be considered simply a rubber-stamp fait accompli. There are factions within the NHL hierarchy that see Balsillie as a maverick owner, along the lines of the NFL’s Al Davis or the NBA’s Mark Cuban. In a league that’s still trying to find its way back into the sporting mainstream after expanding to 30 teams and enduring the longest lockout in the history of professional sport, it would be hard for the NHL to turn its nose up at Balsillie’s $220 million cheque (think of how franchise values have soared since the announcement of that particular deal). Those are big dollars and coming so soon after teams in Ottawa and Buffalo went bankrupt, it gives the impression at least that the league is on fairly solid financial footing.
More than anything else, it looks as if one of the four major professional sporting leagues is going into Las Vegas sooner or later. The NHL likes to boast about all of its cutting-edge ventures into new media (YouTube, Google, MySpace, Joost, NHL.com), but nothing would make a greater splahs than to be first into the gambling capital of the world.
And if it seems a bit incongruous that a league which would like to see the back of Rick Tocchet, after he was found guilty of operating a sports book in New Jersey, would also ponder a move into Vegas, well, we can only quote Walt Whitman, who once said, ‘a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ Words to live by for the NHL, it would seem.
