Quote:
Originally Posted by Horus
After going through a pretty successful expansion process to add Vegas/Seattle, the NHL is pulling some pretty shady stuff with this Phoenix/SLC deal. There have been public expressions of interest from Houston and Atlanta recently and now the league is just arbitrarily going to gift a team to SLC without any type of open competition.
Just seems to be contrary to the more transparent (although probably still shady) expansion competitions they just went through
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Neither of us were on this forum 13 years ago, but I don't imagine there was much talk of shady business when the Thrashers up and moved to Winnipeg with no competition from elsewhere.
Of course, SLC seriously expressed their desires for a team earlier than Houston did. Atlanta has multiple groups interested in a team, the league is going to take some time to sort that out (look how long the Ottawa sale took), and they still need to build their arena (let's not assume the NBA arena is available to them, same as how the Suns arena in Phoenix also wasn't an option for the Coyotes). I also think the Toyota Centre needs some work before being able to host hockey. Unless they have already done the ice plant construction.