One of the hottest debates 20-plus years ago, just before the NHL began its expansion wave into Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus and Minnesota, was whether the NHL was being diluted talent-wise.
It was a rager, the idea that there wouldn’t be enough NHL-quality players to populate the rosters in an expanded league. And I don’t know if it’s because of the increasing number of American-born players as USA Hockey continues to pump out elite players at an amazing rate, or a better awareness of the depth of quality players overseas, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to be as hot a debate anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of people who don’t necessarily think the NHL should continue to expand past 32 teams. I bet you for most fans now, if they’re against expansion, it’s because it makes it that much harder for their own team to win the Stanley Cup. The defending champion Golden Knights are Exhibit A of that sentiment for some fan bases.
But still, it seems rare these days to hear the argument.
And so I asked Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who hails from France and who has had the unique perspective of having played in both expansion Vegas and now Seattle: Is there enough depth to support even more expansion?
“That’s a great question, actually,” Bellemare, 38, said. “I think so. Because if you look at this year, for example, there’s a fair amount of guys retiring not maybe out of choice but maybe more out of necessity, because maybe they didn’t get a contract. They were in a place in their careers where they were like, ‘I’m OK retiring.’ But I feel like if they would have had a team offering a contract they would be like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do another year.’
“And then also, those guys are veteran players who could teach young guys the way, which is something that is disappearing a little bit, too. So I think there is still room and a big enough pool of players to give a chance for another 30 players to be in the NHL and another 20 in the AHL. I think there is.”
The manner in which the NHL has expanded recently also matters in the conversation, the roster rules and the expansion draft leading to way more competitive teams out of the gates. The Golden Knights, with Bellemare on the roster, shocked the world in reaching the Stanley Cup Final in their first season, 2017-18, and the Kraken last season knocked off the defending Cup champion Avalanche in the opening playoff round in just their second year of existence.
And that is part of why Bellemare thinks the NHL can do this again. What’s not to like about how Vegas and Seattle have entered the league?
“This has been two of my greatest experiences,” said Bellemare, who played two years in Vegas and joined the Kraken in the summer, with stops in Colorado and Tampa Bay in between. “You come into a new place, you get everything new from scratch — brand new fan groups who maybe aren’t all fully hockey educated but are growing as the organization is growing.
“I think it’s also been for the people in those two markets, very positive impacts. Vegas is suddenly becoming a sports city now, and it’s all due to the start with the Knights. And the fact something was born there.”
Indeed, the Vegas Born aspect of the Knights, which is their official slogan, still sets them apart from the NFL’s Raiders and MLB’s A’s. The bond the Knights have with their fan base is something you can see with your own eyes when in Vegas.
The Kraken are trying to build that same thing in Seattle.
“You have a brand-new team, you have the possibility for the entire city to be like, ‘This is mine. That logo is mine,’” Bellemare said. “Which is different than when you just move a team, I feel.
“So yes, I think there is room for it (further NHL expansion).”
And obviously, Bellemare said, the owners aren’t going to object.
“On the business side, I don’t see the owners being a problem. They get paid a lot of money when a new team comes in,” he said.
The Knights paid a $500 million expansion fee while the Kraken got dinged $650 million and well, based on the Ottawa Senators recently selling for $950 million, it wouldn’t shock anyone if the next expansion price was set as high as $2 billion.
Players don’t get a cut of that — the expansion fee is split evenly among existing owners — but Bellemare does point out that Vegas and Seattle have been positive revenue impact teams, which does have a direct result for players.
“It’s helped escrow because those two teams so far have been positive (revenue) forces,” Bellemare said.
And, of course, the NHL Players’ Association as a whole directly benefits from expansion for the simple reason there are new player jobs created.
But a front-burner issue for the NHLPA is having the arena mess in Arizona fixed. The Coyotes have been a drag on Hockey Related Revenue (which affects the salary cap and escrow) forever, but they’re especially so now in a 5,000-seat arena.
The NHL shares the sentiment. Bettman at June’s Stanley Cup Final news conference made his strongest comments ever about the Coyotes, basically, having one last shot at figuring out their arena situation.
No one wants to say it out loud, but that is the very thing delaying the league on whether to go ahead with the next expansion wave. It needs to fix Arizona first in case the NHL needs to use a potential expansion city like Houston or Salt Lake City as a relocation city instead.
The Coyotes are hoping to finally have something in place to finalize and announce an arena deal in January, which is pretty much right up against the soft deadline the NHL has given the organization to fish or cut bait.
“They’re looking at a particular piece of property and they’re hoping in the next few weeks, couple of months, to get it finalized,” Commissioner Gary Bettman told our assembled media group after the recent Board of Governors meeting in Seattle. “And they understand that it’s important that it gets finalized in time for us to do next season’s schedule.”
Bettman, meanwhile, reiterated that day that the league continues to get expansion interest from places like Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Houston and Quebec City.
(And by the way, if the Coyotes were relocated, I can assure you that Arizona would go to the top of the expansion list because the league still believes in that market under the right arena circumstances.)
“We’ll listen to expressions of interest. Will one of them come to fruition? Presently I’m not focused on it,” he said. “I wouldn’t rule anything out at some point in time. But it’s not anything that’s front-burner for us.”
Bettman appeared on ESPN’s Red Wings-Blues broadcast this past week and was asked again about expansion plans.
“It’s not something we’re focused on,” Bettman said. “We think the 32 teams we have now are in great places. We like where we are. I can’t ever say ‘never’ to anything. It’s ultimately a Board (of Governors) decision. But we’re not in the middle of, or interested in starting, at least right now, an expansion process.”
Not yet. Not until Arizona gets fixed. But let’s be real, the Board of Governors will be more than happy to share a $2 billion expansion fee. Perhaps twice over if it’s expansion to 34 teams.
Expansion is coming, just not quite yet.
— This article originally appeared in The Athletic.