Gary Bettman announces that the Maloof family will be part of the Las Vegas team… shocker.
If there is anything that Gary Bettman is good at, it’s rewarding his friends.
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Bettman has had a positive relationship with the Maloof family, who are already the owners of the Sacramento Kings, since 2008.
Makes sense- the family has been in cahoots with Bettman since the league moved the NHL Awards to Sin City, which no one was really complaining about (and Alex Ovechkin has embraced with gusto, as the captain arrived for the awards over a week early this summer).
What makes less sense is the league’s proposed expansion to Las Vegas.
In addition to the issue of sports betting, the league will have to wade through a number of potential roadblocks to even make a team in the city a rational idea.
After the ‘always in the red’ issues that the Florida Panthers have been having — and the ownership drama that the Arizona Coyotes have undergone practically since moving to the desert from Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1995 — it makes perfect sense for the league to go into any potential expansion talk with an ownership group already clearly in place.
After all, this is exactly what Bettman and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daley mentioned when shooting down rumors of a league expansion to Seattle as early as next summer. The Board of Governors have been adamant that league expansion talk won’t even be entertained without a clear ownership group in place, a rink-ready arena already built, and stable financial projections for the hypothetical team.
Yahoo’s Puck Daddy discussed the news in detail earlier Wednesday, explaining that Daley had confirmed that the Maloof family and billionaire William P. Foley would make up the ownership group in Las Vegas in the event that the league expands to Nevada- but also suggesting that Daley has shot down any rumors that the expansion has already been approved and voted in by the BOG.
Although a team probably won’t actually make it to the league for at least another full season following the culmination of this one, expect this headline to have some serious staying power.
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