NHL to have ‘Special’ meeting to discuss expansion

Quebec City and Las Vegas appear to be closer to obtaining an NHL expansion franchise

Canada’s NHL hockey analyst, Darren Dreger,  from TSN is reporting that there is a ‘special’ meeting planned to take place in New York City before the end of the month. The primary focus within the meeting will center around the NHL possibly further expanding to 32 teams. The primary two candidates trying to obtain a franchise are Las Vegas and Quebec City in Canada.

Dreger reports that a formal decision for either city is probably unlikely to occur immediately after these meetings. However, Dreger goes further to suggest that the meeting can only be seen as a positive for each city inching closer to obtaining a franchise in the NHL.

The National Hockey League currently has 30 teams and there are 16 franchises on the east coast and 14 on the west coast. If both cities were granted hockey clubs, the conferences would still be uneven and realignment would have to be sorted out prior to hockey commencing in those cities.

There seems to be strong interest by the owners to expand the game into the state of Las Vegas. There has never been a franchise in the state before and time will tell if the move will draw fans into the hockey rink.

Quebec City has had a franchise in the NHL once before. Prior to moving into the NHL, they were part of the WHA from 1972 until 1979. They joined the NHL prior to the 1979-80 campaign and remained there until the 1994-95 season. Unfortunately, due to the low Canadian dollar, the franchise was unable to remain in the province of Quebec and the league relocated the franchise to Colorado. The team moved to the United States and they were then known as the Colorado Avalanche. They went on to win two Conference titles, two President’s Trophies, nine Division titles and two Stanley Cups.

This special meeting will bring elation to each city but before everyone thinks it is a guarantee that they have a franchise, there’s still a lot of work to be done.