Odds are good that Vegas is on the agenda
GM MEETINGS: Season-ticket drive shows the dice are rolling in favour of expansion talks to Sin City
LAS VEGAS — Just call it a sign of the times, Vegas style.
On this steamy desert afternoon, sweaty construction workers continue to weld, rivet and hammer together the skeleton of the spectacular Las Vegas Arena, Sin City’s future hockey home. At least that’s what it will be if entrepreneur Bill Foley has his way.
Perhaps the huge ad plastered on a neighbouring building tells the whole story — the one which has the word “DRINK” in huge letters.
But maybe Foley hopes the NHL Board of Governors who are here for meetings this week will get the message and rubber stamp the process that will bring an NHL team one step closer to coming here — in other words, DRINK Foley’s Kool-Aid that professional hockey’s elite league belongs in Vegas. And vice versa.
To that end, all the signs are there that a vote on an expansion team for Vegas could come as early as September.
While there likely won’t be any official announcement this week, the league is expected to take its first official step to that end when the governors meet here Wednesday prior to the annual NHL Awards Ceremony.
The governors are not officially slated to either meet with Foley or formally tour the venue in the coming days. But with the interest of Las Vegas to acquire a team expected to be on the agenda, the wheels of progression could be rolling by the time all is said and done.
“If the board has any interest in pursuing it, my recommendation would be, then, to open a formal expansion process,” Bettman said during the Stanley Cup final earlier this month.
Bettman has been cautious throughout this entire scenario. And he still is.
“Even if they green-light a formal expansion process, it doesn’t mean we’re going to expand. It means we’ll go through the steps of looking through things and the conclusion at the end of the process could very well be no expansion,” he said at the time.
Maybe so. But the optics — and momentum — appear to be leaning in that direction.
Keep in mind that Bettman approached this topic the same way in December during the Board of Governors meetings when the NHL’s grand poohbah dropped a bombshell by revealing the board of governors had not objected to Foley’s request to gauge the interest of a franchise by undertaking a season-ticket drive.
“Please do not make more out of this than it is,” Bettman said. Over and over again. Whatever the case, even the cynics received food for thought when Foley met with members of the Las Vegas media and fielded questions from fans last month. The 70-year-old billionaire said they had secured 11,500 deposits to go with 1,000 commitments from corporations and 735 suite seats.
At this point, the signs are there that the league will enter the next phase in the format that could bring a team here. As one executive said Monday: “Do you think Gary would be open to something like a season-ticket drive if the league wasn’t serious about it?” Makes sense. So, too, does the fact Seattle remains on the radar for a potential second team, which, with Vegas, would give the NHL two 16-team conferences. The lack of a hockey-first arena remains a stumbling block, although ESPN reported earlier that the area of Tukwila, Wash., was examining the concept of a privately-funded structure just outside Seattle.