The NHL All-Star Game takes place this weekend, and with it,
another chance to get some updates from the NHL’s commissioner himself about
the status of the expansion process. With two special sessions undertaken by the
executive committee regarding Las Vegas and Quebec this month, there should be
enough of a foundation for Gary to share with the public. He will most likely
echo what has already been written about, but in the off-chance there is big
news I reached out the Nashville Predator’s play-by-play announcer Pete Weber
on how Nashville got its start to see if we can come to any conclusions.
Nashville was given a conditional franchise in June of 1997
along with Atlanta, Minnesota, and Columbus. The plan was to have Nashville,
along with Atlanta join in 1999, with Minnesota and Columbus jumping in for the
2000-01 season. According to Weber, however, Nashville lobbied the league to
come in a year earlier than scheduled. “At the time, the plan was for the
Predators to join the NHL the same year that the then-Tennessee Oilers were set
to move to Nashville themselves.” This move to jump the gun was spear-headed by
then owner Craig Leipold and the NHL would grant such a request if they could
sell 12,000 season tickets by March of 1998. The early entry was granted and
they were able to become the first professional franchise in Nashville without
any competition. “In hindsight, Nashville would have liked to have had joined
with the Titans at the same time” Weber added, “because that first year for the
Titans was when they went to the Super Bowl and that generate a lot of
[interest]. It ended up favoring Nashville obviously because they did not have
to share [an expansion draft].”
As we stand with the NHL in regards to Vegas, we know there
has been no formal recommendation made to move to a vote on expansion. It would
be highly suspect that one would occur if there was not enough support for at
least one team to be accepted. To round out the next handful of months, there
feels as though there are a few chances to get this process completed. It is
most likely that in order to have the expansion situation ironed out, there has
to be a ton of work behind the scenes with the owners, the league, and the
players association being conducted. Intertwined with such back-room talks has
to be the input of Bill Foley, and it would be easy to see that given the
practice arena is all but ready to go (such an undertaking does not happen on a
hunch, and was not part of any multi-structure financing package since T-Mobile
Arena stands on its own financially).
Could Foley quietly be leading a charge to entering into a
Nashville-esque entry? It’s not probable, but the signs are all there – the
least of which is the deafening silence coming from the Foley camp. It’s said
throughout sports that whenever it is the quietest, that is when most of the
work is being done…and it’s been awful quiet for an awfully long time.
Back to Mr. Weber who had an interesting tidbit as we drew
our conversation to a close, “I think it will work in Las Vegas. I’ve always
said that whatever of the pro leagues gets to Vegas first would have success.”
He likened the situation of Las Vegas to Portland, where a singular pro
franchise was able to draw an uninterrupted market for full control. The big
item on the table would be television distribution where he added that it would
be quite a feat to launch a regional sports network (RSN) in short order, and
that most likely Vegas would need to piggy-back off of an established RSN such
as Fox Sports’ Arizona or West (Los Angeles).
