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Jeremy Jacobs, the owner of the Boston Bruins, made some comments regarding expansion that could cause a stir among people living in Quebec city and Las Vegas. While the expansion process appears to be in full effect, Jacobs might not believe that there is a true desire for expansion among the other NHL franchise owners. “There’s a lot of content there. There’s a lot of capability there, but I don’t know if there’s a desire or will within the board of the existing franchises for expansion yet,” Jacobs said. “They both made pretty interesting proposals. Both have very legitimate arenas in place and organizations in place. There’s a capacity out there, but I don’t know if there’s a will from a league standpoint.”
Jacobs went on to say that the 30-team league dynamic is good, and that expanding to 32 might not be an inevitability. “I think it’s more important — what is the best thing for the league as a whole, and what’s the best thing for Boston,” he said. “Right now, the 30 teams are pretty good for all of us; talking where we stand today, I feel good about where we are.””
“We’ve got ourselves a real opportunity here to build these new franchises quickly – Jeremy Jacobs
Given the fact that there is already a lopsided number of teams in each conference, with the Eastern Conference having 16 teams and the West having 14. Jacobs said that he would rather a team out west, to balance that a little bit more, although he also admitted that Quebec has the history that Las Vegas doesn’t, as well as a new state-of-the-art arena, although Las Vegas also has a new arena also. Even with that history and the new arena, his opinion seems pretty clear. “Take a look at what’s gone up in Nevada — it’s scary. I mean, it really is. It’s a heck of an arena built there, and there’s a strong interest there,” Jacobs said. “Balance the fact, Quebec has a great hockey interest, (but) it’s an extraordinarily small market.
Puck Prose
Jacobs discussed the fact that very few cities (only Las Vegas and Quebec) applied for the expansion process in the first place. The up-front payment for an expansion team cost $10 million, and $2 million was surrendered for cities that didn’t get granted an expansion team. “Take a look and see who applied. We had no applications from Toronto, interesting,” Jacobs said. “We had no applications from Toronto, so that says a lot. We had two legitimate ones, Quebec and Nevada — it speaks volumes. I’d love to see us in the West to be up in Seattle. Seattle’s a natural, and I would love to see one in Houston, but we can’t get into that building. There are conditions and circumstances in each one of these that we have to take into consideration.” Jacobs touched upon the fact that the thinking behind the process was probably to weed out those groups that thought it wouldn’t cost much to be entered into the expansion process. the $2 million fee surrendered by those cities not receiving a team appears to have done it’s job in deterring groups and cities that might not be as serious, as the expansion process was expected to garner far more interest than only two cities.
The NHL might not be fully committed to declaring two expansion teams as an inevitability, but with both cities progressing through the various stages of the expansion process, the NHL appears to be on track for a 32-team league sooner, rather than later.
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