BETTMAN CAUTIOUS ON EXPANSION, LAS VEGAS PROSPECTS
If his owners are interested, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is prepared to recommend that the league start the process to expand to Las Vegas.
Speaking before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals on Wednesday in Tampa, Fla., Bettman said he is aware of businessman Bill Foley’s attempt to show that the city is ready to embrace the NHL. The league’s Board of Governors will meet June 24 at the MGM Grand, the same day as the league’s awards show at the hotel-casino.
“If, after our discussion in June where I’m going to report where all the expressions of interest stand, including what Las Vegas has been able to accomplish with the ticket drive, if the board has any interest in pursuing it, my recommendation would be then to open a formal expansion process,” Bettman said.
“And 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 if the conclusion at the end of the process could be very well no expansion. So it would just be a question of possibly looking at the expressions of interest and looking at them a little more seriously than we have.”
Foley, the lead investor for the Las Vegas group, has said he has sold more than 11,500 season-ticket deposits since launching the drive in mid-February. The group recently expanded the drive to include partial season tickets. Bettman said he has no reason to doubt the figures.
“It’s his process,” Bettman said. “He was the one testing the marketplace, and if he decided he wanted to announce a count or what level of success he has achieved to this point, that’s up to him.
“I will report that to the Board of Governors at the meeting in June. It looks like his drive has had some degree of success, to say the least.”
While Bettman talked cautiously about Las Vegas, he remained steadfast that two struggling franchises — the Arizona Coyotes and Florida Panthers — are not headed for relocation anytime soon.
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
when they led after two periods, but the Blackhawks ended both streaks, wearing down a defense that had controlled the game for 50 minutes.
“They get the lead on you, they get into that prevent defense, and it’s tough to get through,” Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “It was a good illustration of what this team’s all about, finding ways to win.”
Chicago tied the score with 6:32 left on Teravainen’s high shot over Bishop’s right shoulder.
Then, a turnover by Lightning right winger J.T. Brown after he was stripped by Teravainen set up the winning goal from Vermette, who fired a perfect shot from the slot into the top right corner of the net.
“We didn’t give them much the entire game ... we had chances to put them away. We didn’t put them away,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “Once you do that, to me, you let them hang around.”
Chicago trailed nearly the entire game, giving up a goal to Lightning center Alex Killorn in the first five minutes.
Killorn, who had the winning goal in the final period of Tampa Bay’s Game 7 victory over the New York Rangers to advance to the final, struck just 4:31 into the opening game of the finals.