To Expand or Not to Expland?

1) That question is being asked of not only the number of teams, but also the size of the nets! We'll look at each situation separately. Firstly, expansion was vehemently denied by Gary Bettman when asked about this until only recently. It came as a bit of a shock to the media when he took a non-committal view of possible expansion when asked during the playoffs. This was an apparent monumental shift in league policy! Why? Well of course money! Now we're told that miraculously the league has an 'expansion committee'. Guess who heads it? Tim Leiweke, the Governor of the Los Angeles Kings as well as President of the company that owns the rink in Kansas City. Hmmm, what could that mean? LOL

2) Its estimated that a new expansion team would cost the new owners anywhere from 400-500 million for the privilege of becoming the 31st and 32nd teams. That's a possible 1 billion dollars folks, and the kicker is that not a cent would directly go to the owners new 'partners', the players. For the arithmetically challenged that's an easy 33 million for each owner to pocket for doing nothing! If that's not incentive enough, we don't know what is!?!

3) Many will say (probably true) that talent is diluted enough. Adding another team will further erode the already diluted talent. We can't dispute this claim. Many point to the vast 1990's expansion as a big reason that the league suffered from a scoring malaise towards the end of the decade. Teams with large numbers of mediocre players needed to use a 'trap' to succeed. If that is true, then further expansion would seem to be the wrong course.

4) So where would the new teams go? We have heard/read about KC and Vegas repeatedly, BUT our league sources tells FAUXRUMOS that if and when there is new expansion that one team 'will almost certainly be heading north of the border'. The other, probably to a sun belt team west of the Mississippi. KC being the most logical destination due to the arena being ready. "But Faux isn't Jim Balsillie gonna move Nashville to Canada"? Not so fast there folks. We are hearing that Jim may be being used to asst a new lease deal for Nashville, like he did in Pittsburgh in exchange for a new team awarded to him. (He needs this time to build a new arena in Kitchener)

5) Bottom line folks is that the momentum for expansion is building again. We believe it is now inevitable. The only questions are where and when. Has to make one wonder why anyone would sink 400-500 million for a losing proposition? Another of the reasons why we don't believe the league is losing money!



6) Bigger nets? Well, we are hearing that this once crazy idea is gaining momentum among more and more GM's/owners. A secret committee to look into this was set up last year and the designs were recently demonstrated to the board when they last met. The new proposed nets would be about 15% or so larger. It wouldn't be blatantly obvious, but would in theory open up a few holes that the goalie equipment reduction didn't.



7) Scoring was down this season. If one looks at even strength scoring it has NOT increased too much from pre-Bettman lockout levels. Unless they intend to further reduce goalie equipment(pads should go back to 10"!) and we doubt that will happen soon; with refs continuing the supposed crack down on obstruction, and the other rules changes not apparently having the desired effect of increased scoring then the next option is to modify the nets which have been standardized in size since WWI!