NHL Expansion to Toronto and Quebec City? Of Course

Thar's money in them thar hills provinces. As bleak as things seem in some of the sunbelt hockey towns, up in Canada there is a windfall of cash ready to be had.

Where else would they pay these fees

That is the question the post kept returning to. Where else would folks be willing to pay some of the exorbitant expansion fee numbers that were being kicked around? And why else has the league been so hesitant to allow more relocation from struggling markets to very, very willing ones?

Expansion first, relocation second

The answer offered was simple and cynical in the way that league business usually is. Get the cash from expansion, then shore up the league by relocating one or more teams from soft markets to stronger ones.

Do it in that order and the league collects a windfall and makes more money every year afterwards, once it has made sure those pesky players are not getting more than half of that revenue any more.

Why the Canadian queue matters

A market that will pay a huge fee is worth more to the league than a market that will merely sell tickets. That is why the Canadian cities kept appearing in the expansion conversation while the relocation conversation kept stalling: the fee comes from the new city, and the timing is set by the collective bargaining agreement.

Wysh tells it better

The entry did not attempt to break the story. It pointed readers to the Puck Daddy piece at Yahoo! Sports under the headline about NHL expansion to Toronto and Quebec City once the CBA was settled, and added the one line of analysis the author thought the story needed: of course.

That is the whole post, and it is enough. The reporting belonged to someone else. The framing, that the money explains the patience, belonged here.