The league got a relocation fee when the Thrashers moved to Winnipeg. Granted, it was only $60MM. Funny how there was no relocation fee when a team moved from Winnipeg.

It wouldn't surprise me if this whole expansion thing is cancelled or relaunched now that Quebec City applied and Seattle didn't. The plan was always for Las Vegas and Seattle to be the two expansion teams, bringing the West up to 16 and keeping the precious Red Wings with Florida and Eastern Canada. Then Seattle fucked it all up by having three groups apply for expansion without a single one of them submitting the application. Maybe the league will re-assume ownership of the Coyotes, fold the team, and do a one-team expansion to Las Vegas to bring the league back to 30 teams. That brings in phat xpansion feez, keeps a team in the Southwest, keeps Detroit in the East, and keeps Quebec City out of the NHL: all wins for the NHL.

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lightning fans will bail the first year they dont make the playoffs

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Wrong demo for the NHL... and tourists arent going to Vegas to watch the Las Vegas Gamblers NHL team play Hockey.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

could see some, Boston, NY and Chicago would, it would be 1 game a year...so thats 3 sell outs! could see Montreal making a good show of it...and Maybe Anneheim...

Minn and St Louis would show some, but wouldnt be noticeable.....but the team might be really really good if they get a deal like some other teams that get to spend everything they have on the team...

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

What do you mean by that? All 30 teams are bound by the salary cap. If anything, there are teams that get a wink from the NHL not to spend the minimum (Coyotes, Islanders in the past).

Counting on Ducks fans to travel well is a bad bet. They don't even show up to home games all that well. They're the Los Angeles Hockey White Sox.

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Prior to this NHL to Vegas talk I thought the issue was gambling. Meaning the other leagues wanted to stay away from it. I would bet a NFL or NBA team could also do well in Vegas.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The NBA would make the most sense for Las Vegas. It's always been a pretty good college hoops town, it's a mass-appeal sport rather than the niche-appeal NHL, and the NBA has a proven record of stability in small markets and one-team towns that the NHL only really has with its Canadian teams. Unfortunately, having the All-Star Weekend there in '07 (which I thought was pretty cool) apparently scared the bejeezus out of the casinos because of how many black people were hanging around town.

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NFL would have the easiest time. Only 8 games to fill and could easily get fans from toher cities out there every weekend.

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Well if that Vegas 2M population number is right they should do ok unless they get a really dumb owner. Pittsburgh whole metro not even 1M.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Wrong: the Pittsburgh CSA (the fancy demographers' term for "the whole metro") is estimated at 2,653,781, which puts them eight slots up on Las Vegas. The only metropolitan area with under a million people and a major-league sports team is Winnipeg, and the Jets still make more money than about half the league. (I don't count Green Bay.)

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They must stretch. Pittsburgh's actual population is about 400k. Not sure how far they count.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Up to about 400,000 I guess.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

There's your answer, fishbulb.

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http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance/_/sort/homePct
Florida, Carolina, Arizona, Columbus, New Jersey, Colorado at the bottom of the list for home attendance percentage.

I realize the NHL has their mind made up on expansion teams already, but for Fuck Sake, those bottom 4 cities have no business having hockey teams. Fix that first before you expand and water down the league even further.

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Pretty vast are but not unlike Chicago

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

The most sense is baseball.

"Series" brings people to towns and they have a base of baseball fans in Vegas right now.

Of course the NFL Brings people to town, but thats only 8 games. Now, if they could do something with UNLV, it makes more sense.

The NBA wants no part of VEGAS.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

See that yellow county that is farthest west, in Ohio?

The county that is directly west of where the Pittsburgh airport is located.

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Haha, yeah, it sure feels that way. When I flew out of Pittsburgh, not only did I feel like I was going nowhere, I also felt like the only one there. Is there a real Pittsburgh airport that everyone else goes to while I had to schlep halfway to Youngstown?

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Expansion seems to be on hold because only Las Vegas and Quebec City applied. The league really wants to be in Las Vegas, but would rather not be in Las Vegas at all then be there but also be in Quebec City. It's comical how much the NHL shits on its base.

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Las Vegas will end up like nearly every other NHL expansion team in a warm weather climate. No one there will care. Tourists certainly arent going to Vegas to go to a Hockey game. Just a terrible idea. Quebec City is a no brainer and makes complete sense.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

Some people fly cheap in and out of Latrobe. Same problem but east. Is really small and convenient though.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

This will fail spectacularly.

Now word is getting out that it'll be relocation, not expansion, to Las Vegas. Noted dickbag Peter Karmanos emptied out his kids' trust funds to cover the costs of running the Carolina Hurricanes into the ground, so his kids sued him. Now the Vegas guys might just buy the Hurricanes and move them out west, thereby cancelling expansion, which the NHL didn't want to do anyway once the only non-Vegas applicant was Quebec City.

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'Noted dickbag'.

Criminally underused phrase.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

http://wfla.com/2016/06/15/ap-source-nh ... expansion/
They keep using the word expansion...I hope you are correct, CH in that it's a move Carolina, Arizona....who cares. Adding a team is idiotic.

The only argument I can make for the Vegas NHL team is one of the big sports is going to put a team there eventually....might as well be the first. There are better locations, but obviously the NHL doesn't care.

Please, God...just let this turn out to be a relocation and not a 31st team.

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Nope, sounds like they're gonna keep extending credit to the Hurricanes and expand to Las Vegas, but not Quebec City.

This was always about getting Seattle in, which is apparently never going to happen. This goes back to 1976, when the NHL was going to expand to Denver and Seattle to fight off what was left of the WHA. It was all set, but then the Kansas City Scouts ran out of money and were sold to Denver interests. Instead of saying "okay, we'll just expand to San Francisco and Seattle instead," the league cancelled expansion altogether and left Seattle in the lurch. Then in the '90s when the league was soliciting expansion bids, the owner of the Supersonics elbowed all other suitors out of the process, only to drop out of the bidding once no one else could get in, thereby protecting the Supersonics from ever having a co-tenant. Then, as one last power move, he made sure the new arena bowl wasn't big enough to fit a hockey rink without knocking half the seats out. Of course, now there's no Sonics and no hockey. Seattle was getting all set to build a new arena for new NBA/NHL teams, but the city council shot the plan down because it would have required building over a street. I think they're allergic to sports, which is probably good.

Anyway, they moved Columbus and Detroit to the East to shut the Ilitches up (remember the original realignment called for four "conferences" with tons of regional games and two games each against everyone else, the Wings were fine with this, the union wasn't) and open the West up for Las Vegas and Seattle. The NHL announced expansion hoping those cities would apply so they could be the two finalists out of however many, but then not only did no one from Seattle apply for a team, no one else but Las Vegas and Quebec City did. Now the NHL has to say they're just gonna go with 31 teams when the obvious natural conclusion of all this was 32.

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This is going to be a colossal failure.

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Thanks NHL for not letting some other league make this mistake first.

Should have been the NBA and probably would have if all the casino/hotel owners didn't completely flip their shit that one time black people descended upon Vegas en masse for the All-Star Game.

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I'm not sure if hockey players living in Vegas for half of the year is going to be any better.