Expansion lukewarm subject with NHL

Tentatively, carefully and with a great deal of cautiousness, the NHL appears to be backing into its most reluctant expansion ever.

Giddy-up? Hardly. Whenever he can, commissioner Gary Bettman can’t stress enough that the league may ultimately choose to pass on both Quebec City and Las Vegas. Not surprisingly, and public enthusiasm generated by those cities last year when they applied to join the league has evaporated as the months have passed.

If it happens, it won’t be announced with a flourish of trumpets. The league seems lost in the gritty details and less focused on the big picture reasons it had to expand beyond its current complement of 30 teams in the first place.

Well, it hasn’t forgotten about the money part, the $500 million (U.S.) per squad. A cash infusion has almost always been the primary reason behind NHL expansion over the years, and this drawn out sequence is no different, particularly since this money doesn’t have to be shared with the players like other designated Hockey Related Revenue.

That said, other expansions at least had a secondary reason. Back in ’67, the league was looking to grow beyond its quaint six-team loop and bring in six new U.S. markets in hopes of one day attracting a large American network television contract.

In the early 1970s, NHL owners were battling the World Hockey Association, and getting to Vancouver, Buffalo, Atlanta and Long Island ahead of the upstart league seemed to be good, aggressive business. By the end of the decade, the NHL absorbed four WHA clubs, and waved bye-bye to the others, thus putting to an end any real employment option players had.

In the early 1990s, NHL owners wanted to bring in major U.S. entertainment companies, and so expanded to Florida (Blockbuster Video) and Anaheim (Disney). By the early part of this century, they decided to take another shot at putting down roots in Atlanta and the Twin Cities. Nashville seemed to be a unique market.

Again, money was always the primary reason behind these decisions to expand. But there were other strategic reasons, and whether they necessarily made sense or ultimately bore fruit, they helped drive the process. This time? Well, if the NHL ever had other reasons, they seem to have been forgotten along the way.

Quebec City, like Winnipeg, seems more of interest to the NHL if it could park a failing franchise there. That’s how the Jets “came home” to Manitoba. But none are available.

As far as expansion goes, the 75 cent Canadian dollar, as Quebecor chairman and former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney commented last week, has brought into sharp relief the immense economic challenges a rebirth of the Nordiques would face even though the Videotron Centre at least offers a state-of-the-art facility out of which the team can play.

Quebec City is a romantic notion, really. Most Canadians would love to see NHL hockey back in Quebec City. But 23 U.S. owners aren’t interested in romance. Even the seven existing Canadian teams may not want to add another team that will take a slice of current league revenues. They’re all challenged enough by the currency issue themselves.

Finally, the league really doesn’t need another eastern-based team, with the current imbalance of 16 teams in the Eastern Conference and 14 in the Western Conference a little peculiar as it is.

So the NHL doesn’t seem to want to say “oui” to Quebec City. It just can’t get around to saying “non,” at least partially because only Las Vegas is similarly willing to cough up the half-billion dollars required.

Which brings us to Vegas. The guess here, and it’s just a guess, is that Bill Foley’s Black Knights will get the go-ahead in June, possibly on their own, if only because doing all this legwork and then deciding not to expand at all would seem to be a colossal exercise in going nowhere fast.

For several years, it has certainly seemed like the NHL has been smitten with the notion of being the first major professional league to dip its toe into Sin City’s inviting waters. The city has some limited hockey history — Alexei Yashin and Curtis Joseph once played there — and the population of 600,000 permanent residents is swelled by all those visitors who go to Nevada for gambling, entertainments and things they don’t want to discuss after they leave town and head home.

Vegas has the new T-Mobile Arena, a joint venture between MGM Resorts International and the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which also owns the Los Angeles Kings.

Ahh, there’s a link. The Kings. Again. Just like when the Anaheim Mighty Ducks came into the league and half of the $50 million expansion fee went to Bruce McNall, then the L.A. owner. The AEG barn in Vegas needs a tenant.

Beyond that, you would have to be the most cockeyed optimist imaginable to believe Vegas will be a roaring success and a massive benefit to the NHL. Historically, less than half of NHL expansion teams added since ’67 have been consistently successful. Only Philadelphia, really, has been comparable over the years to the Original Six. The league’s other desert venture, the Coyotes, have been a dismal failure.

At best, Vegas will be like Dallas; if the team is winning, people will come. If it doesn’t win, people won’t. Perhaps that’s why Bettman stated emphatically at the general managers meetings in Florida this week he wants any new teams to be immediately more competitive than NHL expansion teams have generally been.

It’s a nice thought, although it conveniently leaves out the fact Florida was basically a .500 team in its first season and a Cup finalist by year three, and that hasn’t made them a strong franchise.

Moreover, unless the league is willing to guarantee a new team a top-three draft pick for the first several seasons, it would be counterproductive for an expansion team to do well right out of the gate because it would then be denied access to the top draft picks. Other than the odd exception (Tyler Seguin), the draft is the only way to acquire star players.

In general, the league has been very secretive about this process, and has denied at every turn any sense of disappointment that only Vegas and Quebec City applied when it agreed to take applications for expansion. Bettman continues to say the NHL’s executive committee is doing its due diligence, but that seems to have gone beyond being careful and more into the realm of being really lukewarm about the entire concept.

But there’s that $500 million. Or maybe a cool billion dollars, split 30 ways. That can make one overcome one’s reluctance.

Or make it easier to say, “Aw, what the hell!” when the time comes to vote on it. Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Sportsnet and Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column appears here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.